
In r 



Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



WARREN HASTINGS. 



BY 



LOED MACAULAY. 




^''uU .i3 1086 



NEW YORK : 
CHAUTAUQUA PRESS, 

C. L. S. C. DEPARTMENT, 
805 Broadway. 

1886. 



v^. 



COPTEIGHT, 18S6, 

Bt PHILLIPS & HUNT. 



The required books of the C. L. 8. C. are recommended by a Council 
of six. It must, hoicever, be understood that recommendation does not 
involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every 
principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended. 



ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED , 
BY RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY, 
BOSTON, MASS. 



PEEFATOET. 



Ik the following essay, we are brought face to face 
with two remarkable and illustrious men, the one as 
Subject, the other as Biographer, — men who have 
added to the power and renown of England, the 
one in the realm of finance and of colonial govern- 
ment, the other in the broader and more enduring 
realm of literature ; men of rarest abilit}^, worthy 
of comparison with each other as to degree of 
natural endowment, and, in the comparison, each 
reflecting honor upon the other ; both singularly 
versatile, and yet differing widely in intellectual ten- 
dency, and more widely in moral tone. 

Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General 
of India, was born in 1732, and died in 1818. 
Thomas Babington Macaulay, '' the historian, 
the critic, the poet, the philosopher," whose power- 
ful -pen has in this essay produced and preserved 

3 



4 PREFATORY. 

for the ages a graphic picture of the times, circum- 
stances, and character of Hastings, was born in 
1800, five years after the judicial acquittal, and 
eighteen years before the death, of the great Gov- 
ernor-General. In S^anuary, 1841, Macaulay wrote 
to Lord Napier, " I think Hastings, though far 
from faultless, one of the greatest men that Eng- 
land ever produced. He had pre-eminent talents 
for government, and great literary talents too ; fine 
taste, a princely spirit, and heroic equanimity in the 
midst of adversity and danger." While we read 
this tribute from Lord Macaulay to Warren Hastings, 
let us at the very beginning, that we may have a 
glimpse of the colossal proportions of the men 
before us, recall the tribute paid by the late and 
lamented American scholar and critic, E. P. Whipple, 
to the literary ability of Macaulay, and by Sidney 
Smith to his moral purity. "Behind the external 
show and glittering vesture of his thoughts," says 
Whipple, "beneath all his pomp of diction, apt- 
ness of illustration, splendor of imagery, and epi- 
grammatic point and glare, a careful eye can easily 
discern the movement of a powerful and cultivated 
intellect, as it successively appears in the well-trained 
logician, the discriminating critic, the comprehen- 
sive thinker, the practical, far-sighted statesman, 
and the student of universal knowledge. Perhaps 



PREFATOBT. D 

the extent of Macaulay's range over the field of 
literature and science, and the boldness of his gener- 
alizations, are the most striking qualities he dis- 
plays. The amount of his knowledge surprises 
even bookworms, memory-mongers, and other lit- 
erary cormorants. It comprises all literatures, 
and all departments of learning and literature.'* 
Sidney Smith says, " I believe Macaulay to be in- 
corruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, 
wealth, title, before him in vain. He has an honest, 
genuine love of his country ; and the world could 
not bribe him to neglect her interests." 

Thomas Babington Macaulay, the author of this 
essay, was born Oct. 25, 1800, at Rothley Temple, 
in Leicestershire. His grandfather, John Macaulay, 
was a Scotch Presbyterian minister at Cardross ; his 
father, Zachary Macaulay, first a slave-overseer in 
Jamaica, and later, in Sierra Leone, a brave opponent 
of slavery, and the governor of a company designed 
to develop free labor ; his mother, a Quakeress, 
from Bristol, Selena Mills, a pupil and friend of 
Hannah More, firm, wise, true, and tender. 

Thomas B. was a precocious child, saying and 
writing wonderful things before he was five years of 
age. He entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, when 
eighteen years of age ; attracted attention by his 
brilliancy ; won medals, scholarships, and other 



6 PBEFATORY, 

prizes ; contributed to Knighfs Quarterly Magazine^ 
his earliest articles attracting general attention. In 
1824 he wrote his first essay (on " Milton ") for the 
Edinburgh Review; in 1828 was made "Commis- 
sioner of Bankruptcy ; " in 1830 entered the lower 
house of Parliament ; in 1833 was appointed mem- 
ber of " the Supreme Council of India; ** in 1834 
sailed for India ; in 1835 became " President of the 
Committee of Public Instruction,*' and then " Pres- 
ident of the Law Commission," in which position 
he framed a criminal code for the whole Indian 
Empire ; in 1838 returned to England ; in 1840 was 
appointed "War Secretary;" in 1842 wrote the 
" Lays of Ancient Rome ; " in 1843 published three 
volumes of his " Essays ; " in 1846, under the pre- 
miership of Lord John Russell, was made ' ' Pay- 
master of the General Forces," with a seat in the 
Cabinet ; in 1847 lost his membership in Parliament ; 
in 1848 published volumes one and two of his 
"History of England from the Accession of James 
Second;" in 1849 was elected "Lord-Rector of 
the University of Glasgow ; " in 1850 was appointed 
to the honorary office of ' ' Professor of Ancient 
History " in the Royal Academy ; in 1853 received 
the " Prussian Order of Merit; " in 1852 was re- 
turned to Parliament from Edinburgh ; in 1855 pub- 
lished volumes three and four of his " History ; " in 



PBEFATOBT. 7 

1856 was raised to the peerage as "Baron Macaulay 
of Rothley," concerning which he says, " It was 
necessary for me to choose a title off-hand. I deter- 
mined to be Baron Macaulay of Rothley. I was born 
there ; I lived much there ; I am named from the 
family which long had the manor ; my uncle was 
rector there ; nobody can complain from my taking 
a designation from a village which is nobody's 
property now." Lord Macaulay died Dec. 28, 
1859, and was buried in ''the Poets' Corner" in 
Westminster Abbey, Jan. 9, 1860. Trevelyan says, 
"He rests with peers in Poets' Corner, near the 
west wall of the south transept. There, midst the 
tombs of Johnson and Garrick and Handel and Gold- 
smith and Gay, stands conspicuous the statue of 
Addison ; and at the feet of Addison lies the stone 
which bears this inscription : Thomas Babtngton, 
Lord Macaulay, born at Rothley Temple, 
Leicestershire, Oct. 25, 1800 ; Died at Holly 
Lodge, Campden Hall, Dec. 28, 1859. His body 
is buried in peace, but his name liveth for 
evermore." And Dean Stanley, in his "Memo- 
rials of Westminster Abbey," writes, " There lies 
the brilliant poet and historian, who, perhaps, of 
all who have trod the floor of the Abbey, or lie 
buried within its precincts, most deeply knew and 
felt its manifold interests, and most incisively com- 



8 PBEFATOBY. 

memorated them. Lord Macaulay rests at the feet 
of the statue of Addison, whose character and 
genius none had painted as he, and who carried 
with him to his grave the story of the reign of Queen 
Anne, which none but he could adequately tell. 

Lord Brougham had said when Tom Macaulay was 
a little fellow, " A prodigy of a boy there." The 
stories of his precocity are sources of amusement and 
wonder. The largest promises of his juvenile years 
were amply fulfilled to the last. Professor Ranke 
called him "the incomparable man." One of his 
biographers says, " His narrative power among his- 
torians is quite unapproached, and on a level with 
that of the greatest masters of prose fiction. . . . He 
was the best story-teller that ever lived." He was 
a master in the art of winning and retaining attention ; 
clear as crystal ; full of suggestiveness ; never for 
one moment dull ; possessing to its highest degree 
the power of illustration ; drawing at will from inex- 
haustible resources of knowledge. In the Greville 
memoirs the statement is made, that Macaulay had 
' ' displayed feats of memory to be unequalled by any 
human being. He can repeat all of Demosthenes by 
heart, and all Milton, a great part of the Bible, both 
in English and (New Testament) in Greek : besides 
this, his memory retains passages innumerable of 
every description of books, which in discussion he 



PBEFATOEY. 9 

pours forth with incredible facility. . . . There is 
no Greek book of any note which he has not read 
over and over again : in the Bible he takes great 
delight, and there are few better biblical scholars. 
. . . He pours forth stores of learning, opinion, 
precept, example, anecdote, and illustration, with a 
familiarity and facility not less astonishing than 
delightful : he writes as if he had lived in the times 
and among the people whose actions and characters 
he records and delineates." 

Sidney Smith, who met him at Holland Hall, says 
of Macaulay, ' ' There are no limits to his knowledge 
on small subjects, as well as great : he is like a book 
in breeches." Sidney acknowledged, that, after 
Macaulay' s return from India, he was more agreeable 
than before he went. "His enemies," added Sid- 
ney, "might, perhaps, have said before (though I 
never did so) that he talked rather too much ; but 
now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make 
his conversation perfectly delightful." 

Macaulay lacked thorough sympathy with human 
nature, on its spiritual and affectional side. One of 
his biographers says, " He almost lacked the 
stronger passions. . . . He was benevolent, but 
unsympathetic." He had constitutional steadiness 
and uprightness of character, was self-contained, 
prudent, cautious, and honorable. His egotism, not 



10 PBEFATOBY. 

of an offensive type, was colossal. G-reville, while 
conceding his "most extraordinary power" and 
"astonishing knowledge," adds, "but he is not 
agreeable. His face, voice, and manner are all bad ; 
he sees and instructs; he sometimes entertains, sel- 
dom amuses, and still seldomer pleases. . . . He is 
short, fat, and ungraceful, with a round, thick, un- 
meaning face, with rather a lisp." Thomas Carlyle 
gives frank and gruff expression, after his own bear- 
like manner, to his dislike for Macaulay. He records 
in his journal for March 14, 1848, " Friday last at 
Lord Mahon's for breakfast. A Niagara of elo- 
quent, common-place talk from Macaulay. . . . All 
that was in him, now gone to the tongue ; a squat, 
thickset, low-browed, short, grizzled, little man of 
fifty. These be thy gods, O Israel! " 

This is a compact summary of the life, work, and 
character of Lord Macaulay, compiled from many 
sources, and offered as a brief introductory chapter 
to the splendid English classic, now published anew 

for the readers of the C.L.S.C. 

J. H. VINCENT. 
Plainfield, N.J., June 18, 1886. 



WAEEEIir HASTINGS. 



Warren Hastings sprang from an ancient and 
illustrious race. It has been affirmed that his pedi- 
gree can be traced back to the great Danish sea- 
king, whose sails were long the terror of both coasts 
of the British Channel, and who, after many fierce 
and doubtful struggles, yielded at last to the valor 
and genius of Alfred. But the undoubted splendor of 
the line of Hastings needs no illustration from fable. 
One branch of that line wore, in the fourteenth cen- 
tury, the coronet of Pembroke. From another branch 
sprang the renowned Chamberlain, the faithful ad- 
herent of the White Rose, whose fate has furnished 
so striking a theme both to poets and to historians 
His family received from the Tudors the earldoii 
of Huntingdon, which, after long dispossession, 
was regained in our time by a series of events 
scarcely paralleled in romance. 

The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worces- 
tershire, claimed to be considered as the heads of 
this distinguished family. The main stock, indeed, 

11 



12 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

prospered less than some of the younger shoots. 
But the Daylesford family, though not ennobled, 
was wealthy and highly considered, till, about two 
hundred years ago, it was overwhelmed by the 
great ruin of the civil war. The Hastings of that 
time was a zealous Cavalier. He raised money on 
his lands, sent his plate to the mint at Oxford, 
joined the royal army, and, after spending half his 
property in the cause of King Charles, was glad to 
ransom himself by making over most of the remain- 
ing half to Speaker Lenthal. The old seat at 
Daylesford still remained in the family ; but it could 
no longer be kept up ; and in the following genera- 
tion it was sold to a merchant of London. 

Before this transfer took place, the last Hastings 
of Daylesford had presented his second son to the 
rectory of the parish in which the ancient residence 
of the family stood. The living was of little value ; 
and the situation of the poor clergyman, after the 
sale of the estate, was deplorable. He was con- 
stantly engaged in lawsuits about his tithes with the 
new lord of the manor, and was at length utterly 
rained. His eldest son, Howard, a well-conducted 
young man, obtained a place in the Customs. The 
second son, Pynaston, an idle worthless boy, mar- 
ried before he was sixteen, lost his wife in two years, 
and died in the West Indies, leaving to the care of 
his unfortunate father a little orphan, destined to 
strange and memorable vicissitudes of fortune. 

Warren, the son of Pynaston, was born on the 



WAEEEN HASTINGS. 13 

6th of December, 1732. His mother died a few 
days later, and he was left dependent on his dis- 
tressed grandfather. The child was early sent to 
the viIlao;e school, where he learned his letters on 
the same bench with the sons of the peasantry ; nor 
did anything in his garb or fare indicate that his life 
was to take a widely different course from that of 
the young rustics with whom he studied and played. 
But no cloud could overcast the dawn of so much 
genius and so much ambition. The very plough- 
men observed, and long remembered, how kindly 
little Warren took to his book. The daily sight of 
the lands which his ancestors had possessed, and 
which had passed into the hands of strangers, filled 
his young brain with wild fancies and projects. He 
loved to hear stories of the wealth and greatness of 
his progenitors, of their splendid housekeeping, their 
loyalty, and their valor. On one bright summer 
day, the boy, then just seven years old, lay on the 
bank of a rivulet which flows through the old do- 
main of his house to join the Isis. There, as three- 
score and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his 
mind a scheme which, through all the turns of his 
eventful career, was never abandoned. He would 
recover the estate which had belonged to his fathers. 
He would be Hastings of Daylesford. This purpose, 
formed in infancy and poverty, grew stronger as his 
intellect expanded and as his fortune rose. He pur- 
sued his plan with that calm but indomitable force 
of will which was the most striking peculiarity of 



14 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

his character. When, under a tropical sun, he 
ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst 
all the cares of war, finance, and legislation, still 
pointed to Daj^esford. And when his long public 
life, so singularly chequered with good and evil, 
with glory and obloquy, had at length closed for- 
ever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die. 

When he was eight years old, his uncle Howard 
determined to take charge of him, and to give him a 
liberal education. The boy went up to London, and 
was sent to a school at Newington, where he was 
well taught but ill fed. He always attributed the 
smallness of his stature to the hard and scanty fare 
of this seminary. At ten he was removed to West- 
minster School, then flourishing under the care of 
Dr. Nichols. Vinny Bourne, as his pupils affection- 
ately called him, was one of the masters. Churchill, 
Colman, Lloyd, Cumberland, Cowper, were among 
the students. With Cowper, Hastings formed a 
friendship which neither the lapse of time, nor a 
wide dissimilarity of opinions and pursuits, could 
wholly dissolve. It does not appear that they ever 
met after they had grown to manhood. But forty 
years later, when the voices of many great orators 
were crying for vengeance on the oppressor of India, 
the shy and secluded poet could imagine to himself 
Hastings the Governor-General only as the Hast- 
ings with whom he had rowed on the Thames and 
played in the cloister, and refused to believe that so 
good-tempered a fellow could have done anything 



W ABE EN HASTINGS. 15 

very wrong. His own life had been spent in pray- 
ing, musing, and rhyming among the water-lilies of 
the Ouse. He had preserved in no common meas- 
ure the innocence of childhood. His spirit had in- 
deed been severely tried, but not by temptations 
which impelled him to any gross violation of the 
rules of social morality. He had never been at- 
tacked by combinations of powerful and deadly ene- 
mies. He had never been compelled to make a 
choice between innocence and greatness, between 
crime and ruin. Firmly as he held in theory the 
doctrine of human depravity, his habits were such 
that he was unable to conceive how far from the path 
of right even kind and noble natures may be hurried 
by the rage of conflict and the lust of dominion. 

Hastings had another associate at Westminster of 
whom we shall have occasion to make frequent men- 
tion, Elijah Impey. We know little about their 
school-days. But we think we may safely venture 
to guess that, whenever Hastings wished to play any 
trick more than usually naughty, he hired Impey 
with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part 
of the prank. 

Warren was distinguished among his comrades as 
an excellent swimmer, boatman, and scholar. At 
fourteen he was first in the examination for the 
foundation. His name in gilded letters on the walls 
of the dormitory still attests his victory over many 
older competitors. He stayed two years longer at 
^he school, and was looking forward to a student- 



16 WAUUEN HASTINGS. 

ship at Christ Church, when an event happened 
which changed the whole course of his life. How- 
ard Hastings died, bequeathing his nephew to the 
care of a friend and distant relation, named Chis- 
wick. This gentleman, though he did not absolutely 
refuse the charge, was desirous to rid himself of it 
as soon as possible. Dr. Nichols made strong re- 
monstrances against the cruelty of interrupting the 
studies of a youth who seemed likely to be one of 
the first scholars of the age. He even offered to 
bear the expense of sending his favorite pupil to 
Oxford. But Mr. Chiswick was inflexible. He 
thought the years which had already been wasted on 
hexameters and pentameters quite sufficient. He 
had it in his power to obtain for the lad a writership 
in the service of the East India Company. Whether 
the young adventurer, when once shipped off, made 
a fortune, or died of a liver complaint, he equally 
ceased ta be a burden to anybody. Warren was 
accordingly removed from Westminster School, and 
placed for a few months at a commercial academy, 
to study arithmetic and book-keeping. In January, 
1750, a few days after he had completed his seven- 
teenth year, he sailed for Bengal, and arrived at his 
destination in the October following. 

He was immediately placed at a desk in the Sec- 
retary's office at Calcutta, and labored there dur- 
ing two years. Fort William was then purely a 
commercial settlement. In the south of India the 
encroaching policy of Dupleix had transformed the 



WABEEN HASTINGS. • 17 * 

servants of the English Company, against their will, 
into diplomatists and generals. The war of the suc- 
cession was raging in the Carnatic ; and the tide 
had been suddenly turned against the French by 
the genius of young Robert Clive. But in Bengal the 
European settlers, at peace with the natives and 
with each other, were wholly occupied with ledgers 
and bills of lading. 

After two years passed in keeping accounts at 
Calcutta, Hastings was sent up the country to 
Cossimbazar, a town which lies on the Hoogley, 
about a mile from Moorshedabad, and which then 
bore to Moorshedabad a relation, if we may compare 
small things with great, such as the city of London 
bears to Westminster. Moorshedabad was the abode 
of the prince who, by an authority ostensibly de- 
rived from the Mogul, but really independent, ruled 
the three great provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and 
Bahar. At Moorshedabad were the court, the ha- 
rem, and the public offices. Cossimbazar was a 
port and a place of trade, renowned for the quantity 
and excellence of the silks which were sold in its 
marts, and constantly receiving and sending forth 
fleets of richly laden barges. At this important 
point the Company had established a small factory 
subordinate to that of Fort William. Here, during 
several years, Hastings was employed in making 
bargains for stuffs with native brokers. While he 
was thus engaged, Surajah Dowlah succeeded to the 
government, and declared war against the English. 



18 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

The defenceless settlement of Cossimbazar, lying 
close to the tyrant's capital, was instantly seized. 
Hastings was sent a prisoner to Moorshedabad, but, 
in consequence of the humane intervention of the 
servants of the Dutch Company, was treated with 
indulgence. Meanwhile the Nabob marched on 
Calcutta ; the governor and the commandant fled ; 
the town and citadel were taken, and most of the 
English prisoners perished in the Black Hole. 

In these events originated the greatness of 
"Warren Hastings. The fugitive governor and his 
companions had taken refuge on the dreary islet 
of Fulda, near the mouth of the Hoogley. They 
were naturally desirous to obtain full information 
respecting the proceedings of the Nabob ; and no 
person seemed so likely to furnish it as Hastings, 
who was a prisoner at large in the immediate neigh- 
borhood of the court. He thus became a diplo- 
matic agent, and soon established a high character 
for ability and resolution. The treason which at a 
later period was fatal to Surajah Dowlah was already 
in progress ; and Hastings was admitted to the de- 
liberations of the conspirators. But the time for 
striking had not arrived. It was necessary to post- 
pone the execution of the design ; and Hastings, 
who was now in extreme peril, fled to Fulda. 

Soon after his arrival at Fulda, the expedition 
from Madras, commanded by Clive, appeared in the 
Hoogley. Warren, young, intrepid, and excited 
probably by the example of the Commander of the 



WAEBEN HASTINGS. 19 

Forces who, having like himself been a mercantile 
agent of the Company, had been turned by public 
calamities into a soldier, determined to serve in the 
ranks. During the early operations of the war he 
carried a musket. But the quick eye of Clive soon 
perceived that the head of the young volunteer would 
be more useful than his arm. When, after the battle 
of Plassey, Meer Jaffier was proclaimed Nabob of 
Bengal, Hastings was appointed to reside at the 
court of the new prince as agent for the Company. 

He remained at Moorshedabad till the year 1761, 
when he became a Member of Council, and was con- 
sequently forced to reside at Calcutta. This was 
during the interval between Clive 's first and second 
administrations, an interval which has left on the 
fame of the East India Company a stain not wholly 
effaced by many years of just and humane govern- 
ment. Mr. Vansittart, the Governor, was at the 
head of a new and anomalous empire. On one side 
was a band of English functionaries, daring, intelli- 
gent, eager to be rich. On the other side was a 
great native population, helpless, timid, accustomed 
to crouch under oppression. To keep the stronger 
race from preying on the weaker was an undertaking 
which tasked to the utmost the talents and energy of 
Clive. Vansittart, with fair intentions, was a feeble 
and inefficient ruler. The master caste, as was natu- 
ral, broke loose from all restraint ; and then was 
seen what we believe to be the most frightful of all 
spectacles, the strength of civilization without its 



20 WARREN HASTINGS. 

mercy. To all other despotism there is a check, 
imperfect, indeed, and liable to gross abuse, but still 
sufficient to preserve society from the last extreme 
of misery. A time comes when the evils of sub- 
mission are obviously greater than those of resist- 
ance, when fear itself begets a sort of courage, when 
a convulsive burst of popular rage and despair warns 
tyrants not to presume too far on the patience of 
mankind. But against misgovernment such as then 
afflicted Bengal it was impossible to struggle. The 
superior intelligence and energy of the dominant 
class made their power irresistible. A war of Ben- 
galees against Englishmen was like a war of sheep 
against wolves, of men against demons. The only 
protection which the conquered could find was in the 
moderation, the clemency, the enlarged policy of the 
conquerors. That protection, at a later period, they 
found. But at first English power came among them 
unaccompanied by English morality. There was an 
interval between the time at which they became our 
subjects, and the time at which we began to reflect 
that we were bound to discharge towards them the 
duties of rulers. During that interval the business 
of a servant of the Company was simply to wring 
out of the natives a hundred or two hundred thou- 
sand pounds as speedily as possible, that he might 
return home before his constitution had suffered 
from the heat, to marry a peer's daughter, to buy 
rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give balls in St. 
James's Square. Of the conduct of Hastings at this 



WARREN HASTINGS, 21 

time little is known ; but the little that is known, 
and the circumstance that little is known, must be 
considered as honorable to him. He could not pro- 
tect the natives : all that he could do was to abstain 
from plundering and oppressing them ; and this he 
appears to have done. It is certain that at this time 
he continued poor ; and it is equally certain that by 
cruelty and dishonesty he might easily have become 
rich. It is certain that he was never charged with 
having borne a share in the worst abuses which then 
prevailed ; and it is almost equally certain that, if 
he had borne a share in those abuses, the able and 
bitter enemies who afterwards persecuted him would 
not have failed to discover and to proclaim his guilt. 
The keen, severe, and even malevolent scrutiny to 
which his whole public life was subjected, a scrutiny 
unparalleled, as we believe, in the history of man- 
kind, is in one respect advantageous to his reputa- 
tion. It brought many lamentable blemishes to 
light ; but it entitles him to be considered pure from 
every blemish which has not been brought to light. 

The truth is that the temptations to which so 
many English functionaries yielded in the time of 
Mr. Vansittart were not temptations addressed to 
the ruling passions of Warren Hastings. He was 
not squeamish in pecuniary transactions ; but he was 
neither sordid nor rapacious. , He was far too en- 
lightened a man to look on a great empire merely as 
a buccaneer would look on a galleon. Had his heart 
been much worse than it was, bis understanding 



22 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

would have preserved him from that extremity of 
baseness. He was an unscrupulous, perhaps an un- 
principled statesman ; but still he was a statesman, 
and not a freebooter. 

In 1764 Hastings returned to England. He had 
realized only a very moderate fortune ; and that 
moderate fortune was soon reduced to nothing, 
partly by his praiseworthy liberalit}^, and partly by 
his mismanagement. Towards his relations he ap- 
pears to have acted very generously. The greater 
part of his savings he left in Bengal, hoping prob- 
ably to obtain the high usury of India. But high 
usury and bad security generally go together ; and 
Hastings lost both interest and principal. 

He remained four years in England. Of his life 
at this time very little is known. But it has been 
asserted, and is highly probable, that liberal studies 
and the society of men of letters occupied a great 
part of his time. It is to be remembered to his 
honor that, in days when the languages of the East 
were regarded by other servants of the Company 
merely as the means of communicating with weavers 
and money-changers, his enlarged and accomplished 
mind sought in Asiatic learning for new forms of in- 
tellectual enjoyment, and for new views of govern- 
ment and society. Perhaps, like most persons who 
have paid much attention to departments of knowl- 
edge which lie out of the common track, he was 
inclined to overrate the value of his favorite studies. 
He conceived that the cultivation of Persian litera- 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 23 

ture might with advantage be made a part of the 
liberal education of an English gentleman ; and he 
drew up a plan with that view. It is said that the 
University of Oxford, in which Oriental learning 
had never, since the revival of letters, been wholly 
neglected, was to be the seat of the institution 
which he contemplated. An endowment was ex- 
pected from the munificence of the Company ; and 
professors thoroughly competent to interpret Hafiz 
and Ferdusi were to be engaged in the East. 
Hastings called on Johnson, with the hope, as it 
should seem, of interesting in this project a man 
who enjoyed the highest literary reputation, and 
who was particularly connected with Oxford. The 
interview appears to have left on Johnson's mind 
a most favorable impression of the talents and at- 
tainments of his visitor. Long after, when Hastings 
was ruling the immense population of British India, 
the old philosopher wrote to him, and referred in 
the most courtly terms, though with great dignity, 
to their short but agreeable intercourse. 

Hastings soon began to look again towards India. 
He had little to attach him to England ; and his 
pecuniary embarrassments were great. He solicited 
his old masters the Directors for employment. 
They acceded to his request, with high compliments 
both to his abilities and to his integrity, and ap- 
pointed him a Member of Council at Madras. It 
would be unjust not to mention that, though forced 
to borrow money for his outfit, he did not withdraw 



24 WAEEEN HASTINGS. 

any portion of the sum which he had appropriated 
to the relief of his distressed relations. In the 
spring of 1769 he embarked on board of the Dake 
of Grafton^ and commenced a voyage distinguished 
by incidents which might furnish matter for a novel. 

Among the passengers in the Dolce of Grafton 
was a German of the name of Imhoff. He called 
himself a Baron ; but he was in distressed circum- 
stances, and was going out to Madras as a portrait 
painter, in the hope of picking up some of the 
pagodas which were then lightly got and as lightly 
spent by the English in India. The Baron was ac- 
companied by his wife, a native, we have somewhere 
read, of Archangel. This young woman, who, born 
under the arctic circle, was destined to play the 
part of a Queen under the tropic of Cancer, had an 
agreeable person, a cultivated mind, and manners in 
the highest degree engaging. She despised her 
husband heartily, and, as the story which we have 
to tell sufficiently proves, not without reason. She 
was interested by the conversation and flattered by 
the attentions of Hastings. The situation was indeed 
perilous. No place is so propitious to the formation 
either of close friendships or of deadly enmities as 
an Indiaman. There are very few people who do 
not find a voyage which lasted several months in- 
supportably dull. Anything is welcome which may 
break that long monotony, a sail, a shark, an alba- 
tross, a man overboard. Most passengers find some 
resource in eating twice as many meals as on land. 



( 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 25 

But the great devices for killing the time are quar- i/ 

relling and flirting, j The facilities for both these 
exciting pursuits are great. The inmates of the 
ship are thrown together far more than in any coun- 
try-seat or boarding-house. None can escape from 
the rest except by imprisoning himself in a cell in 
which he can hardly turn. All food, all exercise, is 
taken in company. Ceremony is to a great extent 
banished. It is every day in the power of a mis- 
chievous person to inflict innumerable annoyances. 
It is every day in the power of an amiable person to 
confer little services. It not seldom happens that 
serious distress and danger call forth, in genuine 
beauty and deformity, heroic virtues and abject 
vices which, in the ordinary intercourse of good soci- 
ety, might remain during many years unknown even 
to intimate associates. Under such circumstances 
met Warren Hastings and the Baroness Imhoff , two 
persons whose accomplishments would have at- 
tracted notice in any court of Europe. The gentle- 
man had no domestic ties. The lady was tied to a 
husband for whom she had no regard, and who had 
no regard for his own honor. An attachment 
sprang up, which was soon strengthened by events 
such as could hardly have occurred on land. Hast- 
ings fell ill. The Baroness nursed him with womanly 
tenderness, gave him his medicines with her own 
hand, and even sat up in his cabin while he slept. 
Long before the Duke of Grafton reached Madras, 
Hastings was in love. But his love was of a most 



26 W A BEEN HASTINGS. 

characteristic description. Like his hatred, like his 
ambition, like all his passions, it was strong, bnt not 
impetuous. It was calm, deep, earnest, patient of 
delay, unconquerable by time. Imhoff was called 
into council by his wife and his wife's lover. It 
was arranged that the Baroness should institute a 
suit for divorce in the courts of Franconia, that the 
Baron should afford every facility to the proceeding, 
and that, during the years which might elapse before 
the sentence should be pronounced, they should con- 
tinue to live together. It was also agreed that 
Hastings should bestow some very substantial marks 
of gratitude on the complaisant husband, and should, 
when the marriage was dissolved, make the lady his 
wife, and adopt the children whom she had already 
borne to Imhoff. 

At Madras, Hastings found the trade of the Com- 
pany in a very disorganized state. His own taste 
would have led him rather to political than to com- 
mercial pursuits : but he knew that the favor of his 
employers depended chiefly on their dividends, and 
that their dividends depended chiefly on the invest- 
ment. He therefore, with great judgment, deter- 
mined to apply his vigorous mind for a time to this 
department of business, which had been much neg- 
lected, since the servants of the Company had 
ceased to be clerks, and had become warriors and 
negotiators. 

In a very few months he effected an important 
reform. The Directors notified to him their high 



WARREN HASTINGS. 27 

approbation, and were so much pleased with his 
conduct that they determined to place him at the 
head of the government of Bengal. Early in 1772 
he quitted Fort St. George for his new post. The 
Imhoffs, who were still man and wife, accompanied 
him, and lived at Calcutta on the same plan which 
they had already followed during more than two 
years. 

When Hastings took his seat at the head of the 
council board, Bengal was still governed according to 
the system which Clive had devised, a system which 
was, perhaps, skilfully contrived for the purpose of 
facilitating and concealing a great revolution, but 
which, when that revolution was complete and irrev- 
ocable, could produce nothing but inconvenience. 
There were two governments, the real and the os- 
tensible. The supreme power belonged to the Com- 
pany, and was in truth the most despotic power that 
can be conceived. The only restraint on the Eng- 
lish masters of the country was that which their 
own justice and humanity imposed on them. There 
was no constitutional check on their will, and resist- 
ance to them was utterly hopeless. 

But though thus absolute in reality, the English 
had not yet assumed the style of sovereignty. They 
held their territories as vassals of the throne of 
Delhi ; they raised their revenues as collectors ap- 
pointed by the imperial commission ; their public 
seal was inscribed with the imperial titles ; and 
their mint struck only the imperial coin. 



28 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

There was still a Nabob of Bengal, who stood to 
the English rulers of his country in the same rela- 
tion in which Augustulus stood to Odoacer, or the 
last Merovingians to Charles Martel and Pepin. 
He lived at Moorshedabad, surrounded by princely 
magnificence. He was approached with outward 
marks of reverence, and his name was used in pub- 
lic instruments. But in the government of the 
country he had less real share than the youngest 
writer or -cadet in the Company's service. 

The English council which represented the Com- 
pany at Calcutta was constituted on a very different 
plan from that which has since been adopted. At 
present the Governor is, as to all executive measures, 
absolute. He can declare war, conclude peace, ap- 
point public functionaries or remove them, in oppo- 
sition to the unanimous sense of those who sit with 
him in council. They are, indeed, entitled to know 
all that is done, to discuss all that is done, to 
advise, to remonstrate, to send protests to Eng- 
land. But it is with the Governor that the su- 
preme power resides, and on him that the whole 
responsibility rests. This system, which was in- 
troduced by Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas in spite of 
the strenuous opposition of Mr. Burke, we conceive 
to be on the whole the best that was ever devised 
for the government of a country where no materials 
can be found for a representative constitution. In 
the time of Hastings, the Governor had only one 
vote in council, and, in case of an equal division, 



WARBEN HASTINGS. 29 

a casting vote. It therefore happened not un fre- 
quently that he was overruled on the gravest ques- 
tions ; and it was possible that he might be wholly 
excluded, for years together, from the real direction 
of public affairs. 

The English functionaries at Fort William had as 
yet paid little or no attention to the internal gov- 
ernment of Bengal. The only branch of politics 
about which they much busied themselves was ne- 
gotiation with the native princes. The police, the 
administration of justice, the details of the collec- 
tion of revenue, were almost entirely neglected. 
We may remark that the phraseology of the Com- 
pany's servants still bears the traces of this state 
of things. To this day they always use the word 
"political" as synonymous with ''diplomatic." 
We could name a gentleman still living, who was 
described by the highest authority as an invalua- 
ble public servant, eminently fit to be at the head of 
the internal administration of a whole presidency, 
but unfortunately quite ignorant of all political 
business. 

The internal government of Bengal the English 
rulers delegated to a great native minister, who was 
stationed at Moorshedabad. All military affairs, 
and, with the exception of what pertains to mere 
ceremonial, all foreign affairs, were withdrawn from 
his control ; but the other departments of the admin- 
istration were entirely confided to him. His own 
stipend amounted to near a hundred thousand 



30 WARBEN HASTINGS. 

pounds sterling a j^ear. The personal allowance of 
the Nabob, amounting to more than three hundred 
thousand pounds a j^ear, passed through the minis- 
ter's hands, and was, to a great extent, at his 
disposal. The collection of the revenue, the admin- 
istration of justice, the maintenance of order, were 
left to this high functionary ; and for the exercise 
of his immense power he was responsible to none 
but the British masters of the country. 

A situation so important, lucrative, and splendid, 
was naturally an object of ambition to the ablest 
and most powerful natives. Clive had found it dif- 
ficult to decide between conflicting pretensions. 
Two candidates stood out prominently from the 
crowd, each of them the representative of a race 
and of a religion. 

One of these was Mahomraed Reza Khan, a Mus- 
sulman of Persian extraction, able, active, religious 
after the fashion of his people, and highly esteemed 
by them. In England he might perhaps have been 
regarded as a corrupt and greedy politician. But, 
tried by the lower standard of Indian morality, he 
might be considered as a man of integrity and 
honor. 

His competitor was a Hindoo Brahmin whose 
name has, 1)3^^ a terrible and melancholy event, 
been inseparably associated with that of Warren 
Hastings, the Maharajah Nuncomar. This man 
had played an important part in all the revolutions 
which, since the time of Surajah Dowlah, had taken 



WARREN HASTINGS. 31 

place in Bengal. To the consideration which in 
that country belongs to high and pure caste, he 
added the weight which is derived from wealth, tal- 
ents, and experience. Of his moral character it is 
difficult to give a notion to those who are acquainted 
with human nature only as it appears in our island. 
What the Italian is to the Englishman, what the 
Hindoo is to the Italian, what the Bengalee is to 
other Hindoos, that was Nuncomar to other Bengal- 
ees. The physical organization of the Bengalee is 
feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant 
vapor bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs 
delicate, his movements languid. During many 
ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder 
and more hardy breeds. Courage, independence, 
veracity, are qualities to which his constitution and 
his situation are equally unfavorable. His mind 
bears a singular analogy to his body. It is weak 
even to helplessness for purposes of manly resist- 
ance ; but its suppleness and its tact move the chil- 
dren of sterner climates to admiration not unmingled 
with contempt. All those arts which are the nat- 
ural defence of the weak are more familiar to this 
subtle race than to the Ionian of the time of Juve- 
nal, or to the Jew of the dark ages- What the 
horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the 
tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty, ac- 
cording to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit 
is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth ex- 
cuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, 



32 WARREN HASTINGS. 

chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offen- 
sive and defensive, of the people of the Lower 
Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy 
to the armies of the Company. But as usurers, 
as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, no 
class of human beings can bear a comparison with 
them. With all his softness, the Bengalee is by no 
means placable in his enmities, or prone to pity. 
The pertinacity with which he adheres to his pur- 
poses yields only to the immediate pressure of fear. 
Nor does he lack a certain kind of courage which is 
often wanting to his masters. To inevitable evils 
he is sometimes found to oppose a passive fortitude, 
such - as the Stoics attributed to their ideal sage. 
A European warrior who rushes on a battery of 
cannon with a loud hurrah, will sometimes shriek 
under the surgeon's knife, and fall into an agony of 
despair at the sentence of death. But the Ben- 
galee, who would see his country overrun, his house 
laid in ashes, his children murdered or dishonored, 
without having the spirit to strike one blow, has yet 
been known to endure torture with the firmness of 
Mucins, and to mount the scaffold with the steady 
step and even pulse of Algernon Sidney. 

In Nuncomar the national character was strongly 
and with exaggeration personified. The Company's 
servants had repeatedly detected him in the most 
criminal intrigues. On one occasion he brought a 
false charsie ag-ainst another Hindoo, and tried to 
substantiate it by producing forged documents. On 



WAREEN HASTINGS. 33 

another occasion it was discovered that, while pro- 
fessing the strongest attachment to the English, he 
was engaged in several conspiracies against them, 
and in particular that he was the medium of a cor- 
respondence between the Court of Delhi and the 
French authorities in the Carnatic. For these and 
similar practices he had been long detained in con- 
finement. But his talents and influence had not 
only procured his liberation, but had obtained for 
him a certain degree of consideration even among 
the British rulers of his country. 

Clive was extremely unwilling to place a Mussul- 
man at the head of the administration of Bengal. 
On the other hand, he could not bring himself to 
confer immense power on a man to whom every sort 
of villany had repeatedly loeen brought home. There- 
fore, though the Nabob, over whom Nuncomar had 
by intrigue acquired great influence, begged that the 
artful Hindoo might be intrusted with the government, 
Clive, after some hesitation, decided honestly and 
wisely in favor of Mahommed Reza Khan. When 
Hastings became Governor, Mahommed Reza Khan 
had held power seven years. An infant son of 
Meer JafRer was now Nabob ; and the guardianship 
of the young prince's person had been confided to 
the minister. 

Nuncomar, stimulated at once by cupidity and 
malice, had been constantly attempting to hurt the 
reputation of his successful rival. This was not 
difficult. The revenues of Bengal, under the admin- 



34 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

istration established by Clive, did not yield such a 
surplus as had been anticipated by the Company ; 
for, at that time, the most absurd notions were en- 
tertained in England respecting the wealth of India. 
Palaces of porphyry, hung with the richest brocade, 
heaps of pearls and diamonds, vaults from which 
pagodas and gold mohurs were measured out by 
the bushel, filled the imagination even of men of 
business. Nobody seemed to be .aware of what 
nevertheless was most undoubtedly the truth, that 
India was a poorer country than countries which in 
Europe are reckoned poor ; than Ireland, for exam- 
ple, or than Portugal. It was confidently believed 
by Lords of the Treasury and members for the city 
that Bengal would not only defray its own charges, 
but would afford an increased dividend to the pro- 
prietors of India stock, and large relief to the 
English finances. These absurd expectations were 
disappointed ; and the Directors, naturally enough, 
chose to attribute the disappointment rather to the 
mismanagement of Mahommed Reza Khan than to 
their own ignorance of the country intrusted to their 
care. They were confirmed in their error by the 
agents of Nuncomar, for Nuncomar had agents even 
in Leadenhall Street. Soon after Hastings reached 
Calcutta, he received a letter addressed by the Court 
of Directors, not to the Council generally, but to 
himself in particular. He was directed to remove 
Mahommed Reza Khan, to arrest him, together 
with all his family and all his partisans, and to in- 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 35 

stitute a strict inquiry into the whole administration 
of tlie province. It was added that the Governor 
would do well to avail himself of the assistance 
of Nuncomar in the investigation. The vices of 
Nuncomar were acknowledged. But even from his 
vices, it was said, much advantage might at such 
a conjuncture be derived ; and, though he could not 
safely be trusted, it might still be proper to en- 
courage him by hopes of reward. 

The Governor bore no good will to Nuncomar. 
Many years before, they had known each other at 
Moorshedabad ; and then a quarrel had arisen be- 
tween them which all the authority of their superiors 
could hardly compose. Widely as they differed in 
most points, they resembled each other in this, that 
both were men of unforgiving natures. To Mahom- 
med Eeza Khan, on the other hand, Hastings had 
no feelings of hostility. Nevertheless he proceeded 
to execute the instructions of the Company with an 
alacrity which he never showed, except when in- 
structions were in perfect conformity with his own 
views. He had, wisely as we think, determined 
to get rid of the system of double government in 
Bengal. The orders of the Directors furnished 
him with the means of effecting his purpose, and 
dispensed him from the necessity of discussing the 
matter with his Council. He took his measures 
with his usual vigor and dexterity. At midnight, 
the palace of Mahommed Reza Khan at Moorsheda- 
bad was surrounded by a battalion of sepoys. The 



36 WARBEN HASTINGS. 

minister was roused from his slumbers and informed 
that he was a prisoner. With tlie Mussulman grav- 
ity, he bent his head and submitted himself to the 
will of God. He fell not alone. A chief named 
Schitab Roy had been intrusted with the govern- 
ment of Bahar. His valor and his attachment to 
the English had more than once been signally proved. 
On that memorable day on which the people of 
Patna saw from their walls the whole army of the 
Mogul scattered by the little band of Captain Knox, 
the voice of the British conquerors assigned the 
palm of gallantry to the brave Asiatic. "I never," 
said Knox, when he introduced Schitab Roy, covered 
with blood and dust, to the English functionaries as- 
sembled in the factory, ' ' I never saw a native fight 
so before." Schitab Roy was involved in the ruin 
of Mahommed Reza Khan, was removed from office, 
and was placed under arrest. The members of the 
Council received no intimation of these measures 
till these prisoners were on their road to Calcutta. 

The inquiry into the conduct of the minister was 
postponed on different pretences. He was detained 
in an easy confinement during many months. In 
the meantime, the great revolution which Hastings 
had planned was carried into effect. The office of 
Minister was abolished. The internal administra- 
tion was transferred to the servants of the Company. 
A system, a very imperfect system, it is true, of 
civil and criminal justice, under English superintend- 
ence, was established. The Nabob was no longer 



WARREN HASTINGS. 37 

to have even an ostensible share in the government ; 
but he was still to receive a considerable annual al- 
lowance, and to be surrounded with a state of sov- 
ereignty. As he was an infant, it was necessary to 
provide guardians for his person and property. His 
person was intrusted to a lady of his father's harem, 
known by the name of Munny Begum. The office 
of treasurer of the household was bestowed on a son 
of Nuncomar, named Goordas. Nuncomar's ser- 
vices were wanted ; yet he could not safely be 
trusted with power ; and Hastings thought it a mas- 
terstroke of policy to reward the able and unprin- 
cipled parent by promoting the inoffensive child. 

The revolution completed, the double government 
dissolved, the Company installed in the full sover- 
eignty of Bengal, Hastings had no motive to treat 
the late ministers with rigor. Their trial had been 
put off on various pleas till the new organization 
was complete. They were then brought before a 
committee, over which the Governor presided. Schi- 
tab Roy was speedily acquitted with honor. A for- 
mal apology was made to him for the restraint to 
which he had been subjected. All the Eastern 
marks of respect were bestowed on him. He was 
clothed in a robe of state, presented with jewels and 
with a richly harnessed elephant, and sent back to 
his government at Patna. But his health had suf- 
fered from confinement ; his high spirit had been 
cruelly wounded ; and soon after his liberation he 
died of a broken heart. 



38 WAEREN HASTINGS. 

The innocence of Maliommed Reza Khan was not 
so clearly establishecl. But the Governor was not 
disposed to deal harshly. After a long hearing, in 
which Nuncomar appeared as the accuser, and dis- 
played both the art and the inveterate rancour^ 
which distinguished him, Hastings pronounced that 
the charge had not been made out, and ordered the 
fallen minister to be set at liberty. 

Nuncomar had purposed to destroy the Mussul- 
man administration, and to rise on its ruin. Both 
his malevolence and his cupidit}^ had been disap- 
pointed. Hastings had made him a tool, and used 
him for the purpose of accomplishing the transfer of 
the government from Moorshedabad to Calcutta, 
from native to European hands. The rival, the 
enemy, so long envied, so implacably persecuted, 
had been dismissed unhurt. The situation so long 
and ardently desired had been abolished. It was 
natural that the Governor should be from that time 
an object of the most intense hatred to the vindic- 
tive Brahmin. As yet, however, it was necessary 
to suppress such feelings. The time was coming 
when that long animosity was to end in a desperate 
and deadly struggle. 

In the mean time, Hastings was compelled to turn 
his attention to foreign affairs. The object of his 
diplomacy was at this time simply to get money. The 
finances of his government were in an embarrassed 
state, and this embarrassment he was determined to 
relieve by some means, fair or foul. The principle 



WARBEN HASTINGS. 39 

which directed all his dealings with his neighbors is 
fully expressed by the old motto of one of the great 
predatory families of Teviotdale, "Thou shalt want 
ere I want." He seems to have laid it down, as a 
fundamental proposition which could not be dis- 
puted, that, when he had not as many lacs of rupees 
as the public service required, he was to take them 
from anybody who had. One thing, indeed, is to 
be said in excuse for him. The pressure applied to 
him by his employers at home was such as only the 
highest virtue could have withstood, such as left 
him no choice except to commit great wrongs, or to 
resign his high post, and with that post all his hopes 
of fortune and distinction. The Directors, it is 
true, never enjoined or applauded any crime. Far 
from it. Whoever examines their letters written at 
that time, will find there many just and humane 
sentiments, many excellent precepts, in short, an 
admirable code of political ethics. But every exhor- 
tation is modified or nullified by a demand for 
money, " Govern leniently, and send more money ; 
practice strict justice and moderation towards neigh- 
boring powers, and send more money ; '* this is, in 
truth, the .sum of almost all the instructions that 
Hastings ever received from home. Now these in- 
structions, being interpreted, mean simply, " Be the 
father and the oppressor of the people ; be just and 
unjust, moderate and rapacious." The Directors 
dealt with India, as the Church, in the good old 
times, dealt with a heretic. They delivered the vie- 



40 WABEEN EASTINGS. 

tim over to the executioners, with an earnest request 
that all possible tenderness might be shown. We by 
no means accuse or suspect those who framed these 
despatches of hypocrisy. It is probable that, writ- 
ing fifteen thousand miles from the place where 
their orders were to be carried into effect, they 
never perceived the gross inconsistency of which 
they were guilty ; but the inconsistency was at once 
manifest to their vicegerent "at Calcutta, who, with 
an empty treasury, with an unpaid army, with his 
own salary often in arrear, with deficient crops, 
with government tenants daily running away, was 
called upon to remit home another half million 
without fail. Hastings saw that it was absolutely 
necessary for~ him to disregard either the moral 
discourses or the pecuniary requisitions of his em- 
ployers. Being forced to disobey them in some- 
thing, he had to consider what kind of disobedience 
they would most readily pardon ; and he correctly 
judged that the safest course would be to neglect 
the sermons and to find the rupees. 

A mind so fertile as his, and so little restrained 
by conscientious scruples, speedily discovered sev- 
eral modes of relieving the financial embarrassments 
of the government. The allowance of the Nabob of 
Bengal was reduced at a stroke from three hundred 
and twenty thousand pounds a year to half that sum. 
The Company had bound itself to pay near three 
hundred thousand pounds a year to the Great Mogul 
as a mark of homage for the provinces which he had 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 41 

intrusted to their care ; and they had ceded to him 
the districts of Corah and Allahabad. On the plea 
that the Mogul was not really independent, but 
merely a tool in the hands of others, Hastings de- 
termined to retract these concessions. He accord- 
ingl}^ declared that the English would pay no more 
tribute, and sent troops to occupy Allahabad and 
Corah. The situation of these places was such, 
that there would be little advantage and great ex- 
pense in retaining them. Hastings, who wanted 
money, and not territory, determined to sell them. 
A purchaser was not wanting. The rich province 
of Oude had, in the general dissolution of the Mogul 
Empire, fallen to the share of the great Mussulman 
House by which it is still governed. About twenty 
years ago, this House, by the permission of the 
British government, assumed the royal title ; but in 
the time of Warren Hastings such an assumption 
would have been considered by the Mahommedans 
of India as a monstrous impiety. The Prince of 
Oude, though he held the power, did not venture to 
use the style of sovereignty. To the appellation of 
Nabob or Viceroy, he added that of Vizier of the 
monarchy of Hindostan, just as in the last century 
the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, though 
independent of the Em.peror, and often in arms 
against him, were proud to style themselves his 
Grand Chamberlain and Grand Marshal. Sujah 
Dowlah, then Nabob Vizier, was on excellent terms 
with the English. He had a large treasure. Alia- 



42 WARREN HASTINGS. 

liabad and Corah were so situated that they might 
be of use to him, and could be of none to the Com- 
pany. The buyer and seller soon came to an un- 
derstanding ; and the provinces which had been 
torn from the Mogul were made over to the govern- 
ment of Oude for about half a million sterling. 

But there was still another matter still more im- 
portant to be settled by the Vizier and the Governor. 
The fate of a brave people was to be decided. It 
was decided in a manner which has left a lasting 
stain on the fame of Hastings and of England. 

The people of Central Asia had always been to 
the inhabitants of India what the warriors of the 
German forests were to the subjects of the decaying 
monarchy of Rome. The dark, slender, and timid 
Hindoo shrank from a conflict with the strong mus- 
cle and resolute spirit of the fair race which dwelt 
beyond the passes. There is reason to believe that, 
at a period anterior to the dawn of regular history, 
the people who spoke the rich and flexible Sanscrit 
came from regions lying far beyond the Hyphasis 
and the Hystaspes, and imposed their yoke on the 
children of the soil. It is certain that, during 
the last ten centuries, a succession of invaders 
descended from the west on Hindostan ; nor was 
the course of conquest ever turned back towards the 
setting sun, till that memorable campaign in which 
the cross of Saint George was planted on the walls 
of Ghizui. 

The Emperors of Hindostan themselves came from 



WARREN HASTINGS. 43 

the other side of the great mountain ridge ; and it 
had always been their practice to recruit their army 
from the hardy and valiant race from which their 
own illustrious House sprang. Among the military 
adventurers who were allured to the Mogul stand- 
ards from the neighborhood of Cabul and Candahar, 
were conspicuous several gallant bands, known by 
the name of the Rohillas. Their services had been 
rewarded with large tracts of land, fiefs of the spear, 
if we may use an expression drawn from an analo- 
gous state of things, in that fertile plain through 
which the Ramgunga flows from the snowy heights 
of Kumaon to join the Ganges. In the general con- 
fusion which followed the death of Aurungzebe, the 
warlike colony became virtually independent. The 
Rohillas were distinguished from the other inhabit- 
ants of India by a peculiarly fair complexion. 
They were more honorably distinguished by courage 
in war, and by skill in the arts of peace. While 
anarchy raged from Lahore to Cape Comorin, their 
little territory enjoyed the blessings of repose under 
the guardianship of valor. Agriculture and com- 
merce flourished among them ; nor were they neg- 
ligent of rhetoric and poetry. Many persons now 
living have heard aged men talk with regret of the 
golden days when the Afghan princes ruled in the 
vale of Rohilcund. 

Sujah Dowlah had set his heart on adding this 
rich district to his own principality. Right, or show 
of right, he had absolutely none. His claim was in 



44 WARBEN HASTINGS. 

no respect better founded than that of Catherine to 
Poland, or that of the Bonaparte family to Spain. 
The Rohillas held their country by exactly the same 
title by which he held his, and had governed their 
country far better than his had ever been governed. 
Nor were they a people whom it was perfectly safe 
to attack. Their land was indeed an open plain, 
destitute of natural defences ; but their veins were 
full of the high blood of Afghanistan. As soldiers, 
they had not the steadiness which is seldom found 
except in company with strict discipline ; but their 
impetuous valor had been proved on many fields of 
battle. It was said that their chiefs, when united 
by common peril, could bring eighty thousand men 
into the field. Sujah Dowlah had himself seen 
them fight, and wisely shrank from a conflict with 
them. There was in India one army, and only one, 
against which even those proud Caucasian tribes 
could not stand. It had been abundantly proved 
that neither tenfold odds, nor the martial ardor of 
the boldest Asiatic nations, could avail ought against 
English science and resolution. Was it possible to 
induce the Governor of Bengal to let out to hire the 
irresistible energies of the imperial people, the skill 
against which the ablest chiefs of Hindostan were 
helpless as infants, the discipline which had so often 
triumphed over the frantic struggles of fanaticism 
and despair, the unconquerable British courage which 
is never so sedate and stubborn as towards the close 
of a doubtful and murderous day? 



WARREN HASTINGS. 45 

This was what the Nabob Vizier asked, and what 
Hastings granted. A bargain was soon struck. 
Each of the negotiators had what the other wanted. 
Hastings was in need of funds to carry on the gov- 
ernment of Bengal, and to send remittances to Lon- 
don ; and Sujah Dowlah had an ample revenue.' 
Sujah Dowlah was bent on subjugating the Rohillas ; 
and Hastings had at his disposal the only force by 
which the Rohillas could be subjugated. It was 
agreed that an English army should be lent to the 
Nabob Vizier, and that, for the loan, he should pay 
four hundred thousand pounds sterling, besides de- 
fraying all the charge of the troops while employed 
in his service. 

"I really cannot see," says Mr. Gleig, "upon 
what grounds, either of political or moral justice, 
this proposition deserves to be stigmatized as infa- 
mous." If we understand the meaning of words, it 
is infamous to commit a wicked action for hire, and 
it is wicked to engage in war without provocation. 
In this particular war, scarcely one aggravating cir- 
cumstance was wanting. The object of the Rohilla 
war was this, to deprive a large population, who had 
never done us the least harm, of a good government, 
and to place them, against their will, under an ex- 
ecrably bad one. Nay, even this is not all. Eng- 
land now descended far below the level even of 
those petty German princes who, about the same 
time, sold us troops to fight the Americans. The 
Hussarmongers of Hesse and Anspach had at least 



46 WARREN HASTINGS. 

the assurance that the expeditions on which their 
soldiers were to be employed would be conducted in 
conformity with the humane rules of civilized war- 
fare. Was the Rohilla war likely to be so con- 
ducted? Did the Governor stipulate that it should 
be so conducted ? He well knew what Indian war- 
fare was. He well knew that the power which he 
covenanted to put into Sujah Dowlah's hands would, 
in all probability, be atrociously abused, and he re- 
quired no guarantee, no promise, that it should not 
be so abused. He did not even reserve to himself 
the right of withdrawing his aid in case of abuse, 
however gross. We are almost ashamed to notice 
Major Scott's plea, that Hastings was justified in 
letting out English troops to slaughter the Rohillas, 
because the Rohillas were not of Indian race, but a 
colony from a distant country. What were the 
English themselves ? Was it for them to proclaim 
a crusade for the expulsion of all intruders from the 
countries watered by the Ganges? Did it lie in 
their mouths to contend that a foreign settler who 
establishes an empire in India is a caiiut lupinumf 
What would they have said if any other power had, 
on such a ground, attacked Madras or Calcutta, 
without the slightest provocation ? Such a defence 
was wanting to make the infamy of the transaction 
complete. The atrocity of the crime, and the hypoc- 
risy of the apology, are worthy of each other. 

One of the three brigades of which the Bengal 
army consisted, was sent under Colonel Champion 



WARBEN HASTINGS. 47 

to join Sujah Dowlah's forces. The Rohillas ex- 
postulated, entreated, offered a large ransom, but in 
vain. They then resolved to defend themselves to 
the last. A bloody battle was fought. ' ' The en- 
emy," says Colonel Champion, "gave proof of a 
good share of military knowledge ; and it is impos- 
sible to describe a more obstinate firmness of resolu- 
tion than they displayed." The dastardly sovereign 
of Oude fled from the field. The English were 
left unsupported ; but their fire and their charge 
were irresistible. It was not, however, till the 
most distinguished chiefs had fallen, fighting bravely 
at the head of their troops, that the E-ohilla ranks 
gave way. Then the Nabob Vizier and his rabble 
made their appearance, and hastened to plunder the 
camp of the valiant enemies whom they had never 
dared to look in the face. The soldiers of the Com- 
pany, trained in an exact discipline, kept unbroken 
order, while the tents were pillaged by these worth- 
less allies. But many voices were heard to exclaim, 
" We have had all the fighting, and those rogues 
are to have all the profit." 

Then the horrors of Indian war were let loose on 
the fair valleys and cities of Rohilcund. The whole 
country was in a blaze. More than a hundred thou- 
sand people fled from their homes to pestilential 
jungles, preferring famine, and fever, and the haunts 
of tigers, to the tyranny of him to whom an English 
and a Christian government had, for shameful lucre, 
sold their substance, and their blood, and the honor 



48 WARREN HASTINGS. 

of their wives and daughters. Colonel Champion 
remonstrated with the Nabob Vizier, and sent strong 
representations to Fort William ; but the Governor 
had made no conditions as to the mode in which the 
war was to be carried on. He had troubled himself 
about nothing but his forty lacs ; and, though he 
might disapprove of Sujah Dowlah's wanton barbar- 
ity, he did not think himself entitled to interfere, 
except by offering advice. This delicacy excites 
the admiration of the biographer. "Mr. Hastings," 
he says, " could not himself dictate to the Nabob, 
nor permit the commander of the Company's troops 
to dictate how the war was to be carried on." No, 
to be sure. Mr. Hastings had only to put down 
by main force the brave struggles of innocent men 
fighting for their liberty. Their military resistance 
crushed, his duties ended ; and he had then only to 
fold his arms and look on, while their villages were 
burned, their children butchered, and their women 
violated. Will Mr. Gleig seriously maintain this 
opinion? Is any rule more plain than this, that 
whoever voluntarily gives to another irresistible 
power over human beings, is bound to take order 
that such power shall not be barbarously abused? 
But we beg pardon of our readers for arguing a 
point so clear. 

We hasten to the end of this sad and disgraceful 
story. The war ceased. The finest population in 
India was subjected to a greedy, cowardly, cruel 
tyrant. Commerce and agriculture languished. The 



WARREN HASTINGS, 49 

rich province which had tempted the cupidity of 
Sujah Dowlah became the most miserable part even 
of his miserable dominions. Yet is the injured na- 
tion not extinct. At long intervals, gleams of its 
ancient spirit have flashed forth ; and even at this 
day, valor, and self-respect, and a chivalrous feel- 
ing rare among Asiatics, and a bitter remembrance 
of the great crime of England, distinguish that noble 
Afghan race. To this day they are regarded as the 
best of all sepoys at the cold steel ; and it was very 
recently remarked, by one who had enjoyed great 
opportunities of observation, that the only natives 
of India to whom the word " gentleman " can with 
perfect propriety be applied, are to be found among 
the Rohillas. 

Whatever we may think of the morality of 
Hastings, it cannot be denied that the financial 
results of his policy did honor to his talents. In 
less than two years after he assumed the govern- 
ment, he had, without imposing any additional 
burdens on the people subject to his authority, 
added about four hundred and fifty thousand pounds 
to the annual income of the Company, besides pro- 
curing about a million in ready money. He had also 
relieved the finances of Bengal from military expendi- 
ture, amounting to near a quarter of a million a year, 
and had thrown that charge on the Nabob of Oude. 
There can l)e no doubt that this was a result which, 
if it had been obtained by honest means, would 
have entitled him to the warmest gratitude of his 



I 50 WAEBEN HASTINGS. 

country, and which, by whatever means obtained, 
proved that he possessed great talents for adminis- 
tration. 

In the meantime. Parliament had been engaged 
in long and grave discussions on ^Asiatic affairs. 
The ministry of Lord North, in the session of 1773, 
introduced a measure which made a considerable 
change in the constitution of the Indian government. 
This law, known by the name of the Regulating 
Act, provided that the presidency of Bengal should 
exercise a control over the other possessions of the 
Company ; that the chief of that presidency should 
be styled Governor-General ; that he should be 
assisted by four Councillors ; and that a supreme 
court of judicature, consisting of a chief justice and 
three inferior judges, should be established at Cal- 
cutta. This court was made independent of the 
Governor-General and Council, and was intrusted 
with a civil and criminal jurisdiction of immense 
and, at the same time, of undefined extent. 

The Governor-General and Councillors were named 
in the act, and were to hold their situations for five 
years. Hastings was to be the first Governor- 
General. One of the four new Councillors, Mr. 
Barwell, an experienced servant of the Company, 
was then in India. The other three. General 
Clavering, Mr. Monson, and Mr. Francis, were 
sent out from England. 

The ablest of the new Councillors was, beyond all 
doubt, Philip Francis. His acknowledged composi- 



WARREN HASTINGS. 51 

tions prove that he possessed considerable eloquence 
and information. Several years passed in the pub- 
lic offices had formed him to habits of business. 
His enemies have never denied that he had a fear- 
less and . manly spirit ; and his friends, we are 
afraid, must acknowledge that his estimate of him- 
self was extravagantly high, that his temper was 
irritable, that his deportment was often rude and 
petulant, and that his hatred was of intense bitter- 
ness and long duration. 

It is scarcely possible to mention this eminent 
man without adverting for a moment to the question 
which his np.me at once suggests to every mind. 
Was he the author of the Letters of Junius ? Our 
own firm belief is that he was. The evidence is, 
we think, such as would support a verdict in a civil, 
nay, in a criminal proceeding. The handwriting of 
Junius is the very peculiar handwriting of Francis, 
slightly disguised. As to the position, pursuits, 
and connections of Junius, the following are the 
most important facts which can be considered as 
clearly proved : first, that he was acquainted with 
the" technical forms of the secretary of state's office ; 
secondly, that he was intimately acquainted with 
the business of the War Office ; thirdly, that he, 
during the year 1770, attended debates in the House 
of Lords, and took notes of speeches, particularly of 
the speeches of Lord Chatham ; fourthly, that he 
bitterly resented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to |, 
the place of deputy secretary- at- war ; fifthly, that 



52 WARREN HASTINGS. 

he was bound b}^ some strong tie to the first Lord 
Holland. Now, Francis passed some years in the 
secretary of state's office. He was subsequently 
chief clerk of the War Office. He repeatedly men- 
tioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches 
of Lord Chatham, and some of these speeches were 
actually printed from his notes. He resigned his 
clerkship at the War Office from resentment at the 
appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord 
Holland that he was first introduced into the public 
service. Now, here are five marks, all of which 
ought to be found in Junius. They are all five 
found in Francis. We do not believe that more 
than two of them can be found in any other person 
whatever. If this argument does not settle the 
question, there is an end of all reasoning on circum- 
stantial evidence. 

The internal evidence seems to us to point the 
same way. The style of Francis bears a strong 
resemblance to that of Junius ; nor are we disposed 
to admit, what is generally taken for granted, that 
the acknowleged compositions of Francis are very 
decidedly inferior to the anonymous letters. The 
argument from inferiority, at all events, is one 
which may be urged with at least equal force against 
every claimant that has ever been mentioned, wit'.i 
the single exception of Burke ; and it would be a 
waste of time to prove that Burke was not Junius. 
And what conclusion, after all, can be drawn from 
mere inferiority? Every writer must produce his 



i 



W ABM EN EASTINGS. 53 

best work ; and the interval between his best work 
and his second best work may be very wide indeed. 
Nobody will say that the best letters of Junius are 
more decidedly superior to the acknowledged works 
of Francis than three or four of Corneille's trage- 
dies to the rest, than three or four of Ben Jonsou's 
comedies to the rest, than the Pilgrim's Progress to 
the other works of Bunyan, than Don Quixote to 
the other works of Cervantes. Nay, it is certain 
that Junius, whoever he may have been, was a most 
unequal writer. To go no further than the letters 
which bear the signature of Junius ; the letter to the 
King, and the letters to Home Tooke, have little in 
common, except the asperity ; and asperit}^ was an 
ingredient seldom wanting either in the writings or 
in the speeches of Francis. 

Indeed, one of the strongest reasons for believing 
that Francis was Junius is the moral resemblance 
between the two men. It is not difficult, from the 
letters which, under various signatures, are known to 
have been written by Junius, and from his dealings 
with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably cor- 
rect notion of his character. He was clearly a man 
not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity, a 
man whose vices were not of a sordid kind. But he 
must also have been a man in the hiofhest deo;ree 
arrogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence, 
and prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence 
for public virtue. " Doest thou well to be angry? " 
was the question asked in old time of the Hebrew 



54 WABREN HASTINGS. 

prophet. And he answered, "I do well." This 
was evidently the temper of Junius ; p,nd to this 
cause we attribute the savage cruelty which dis- 
graces several of his letters. No man is so mer- 
ciless as he who, under a strong self-delusion, 
confounds his antipathies with his duties. It may 
be added that Junius, though allied with the demo- 
cratic party by common enmities, was the very op- 
posite of a democratic politician. While attacking 
individuals with a ferocity which perpetually vio- 
lated all the laws of literary warfare, he regarded 
the most defective parts of old institutions with a 
respect amounting to pedantry, pleaded the cause 
of Old Sarum with fervor, and contemptuously told 
the capitalists of Manchester and Leeds that, if they 
wanted votes, they might buy land and become free- 
holders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All this, 
we believe, might stand, with scarcely any change, 
for a character of Philip Francis. 

It is not strange that the great anonymous writer 
should have been willing at that time to leave the 
country which had been so powerfully stirred by his 
eloquence. Everything had gone against him. That 
party which he clearly preferred to every other, the 
party of George Grenville, had been scattered by 
the death of its chief ; and Lord Suffolk had led 
the greater part of it over to the ministerial benches. 
The ferment produced by the Middlesex election 
had gone down. Every faction must have been 
alike an object of aversion tt) Junius. His opinions 



WAREEN HASTINGS. 65 

on domestic affairs separated him from the ministry ; 
his opinions on colonial affairs from the opposition. 
Under such circumstances, he had thrown down his 
pen in misanthropical despair. His farewell letter 
to Woodfall bears date the nineteenth of Janu- 
ary, 1773. In that letter, he declared that he must 
be an idiot to write again ; that he had meant well 
by the cause and the public ; that both were given 
up ; that there were not ten men who would act 
steadily together on any question. " But it is all 
alike," he added, " vile and contemptible. You have 
never flinched that I know of ; and I shall always 
rejoice to hear of your prosperity.'* These were 
the last words of Junius. In a year from that time, 
Philip Francis was on his voyage to Bengal. 

With the three new Councillors came out the 
Judges of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice 
was Sir Elijah Impey, He was an old acquaintance 
of Hastings ; and it is probable that the Governor- 
General, if he had searched through all the inns of 
court, could not have found an equally serviceable 
tool. But the members of , Council were by no 
means in an obsequious mood. Hastings greatly 
disliked the new form of government, and had no 
very high opinion of his coadjutors. They had 
heard of this, and were disposed to be suspicious 
and punctilious. When men are in such a frame of 
mind, any trifle is sufficient to give occasion for dis- 
pute. The members of Council expected a salute 
of twenty-one guns from the batteries of Fort Wil- 



56 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

liam. Hastings allowed them only seventeen. They 
landed in ill-humor. The first civilities were ex- 
changed with cold reserve. On the morrow com- 
menced that long quarrel which, after distracting 
British India, was renewed in England, and in 
which all the most eminent statesmen and orators 
of the age took active part on one or the other side. 

Hastings was supported by Barwell. They had 
not always been friends. But the arrival of the 
new members of Council from England naturally 
had the effect of uniting the old servants of the 
Company. Clavering, Monson, and Francis formed 
the majority. They instantly wrested the govern- 
ment out of the hands of Hastings, condemned, cer- 
tainly not without justice, his late dealings with the 
Nabob Vizier, recalled the English agent from Oude, 
and sent thither a creature of their own, ordered the 
brigade which had conquered the unhappy Rohillas 
to return to the Company's territories, and insti- 
tuted a severe inquiry into the conduct of the war. 
Next, in spite of the Governor-General's remon- 
strances, they proceeded to exercise, in the most 
indiscreet manner, their new authority over the 
subordinate presidencies ; threw all the affairs of. 
Bombay into confusion ; and interfered, with an 
incredible union of rashness and feebleness, in the 
intestine disputes of the Mahratta government. At 
the same time, they fell on the internal administra- 
tion of Bengal, and attacked the whole fiscal and 
judicial system, a system which was undoubtedly 



WABEEN HASTINGS, 57 

defective, but which it was very improbable that 
gentlemen fresh from England would be competent 
to amend. The effect of their reforms was that all 
protection to life and property was withdrawn, and 
that gangs of robbers plundered and slaughtered 
with impunity in the very suburbs of Calcutta. 
Hastings continued to live in the Government-house, 
and to draw the salary of Governor-General. He 
continued even to take the lead at the council-board 
in the transaction of ordinary business ; for his op- 
ponents could not but feel that he knew much of 
which they were ignorant, and that he decided, both 
surely and speedily, many questions which to them 
would have been hopelessly puzzling. But the 
higher powers of government and the most valuable 
patronage had been taken from him. 

The natives soon found this out. They consid- 
ered him as a fallen man ; and they acted after their 
kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in 
India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to 
death, no bad type of what happens in that country, 
as often as fortune deserts one who has been great 
and dreaded. In an instant, all the sycophants who 
had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, 
to pander for him, to poison for him, hasten to pur- 
chase the favor of his victorious enemies by accus- 
ing him. An Indian government has only to let it 
be understood that it wishes a particular man to be 
ruined ; and, in twenty-four hours, it will be fur- 
nished with grave charges, supported by depositions 



5S WAMBEN HASTINGS. 

so full and circumstantial that any person unaccus- 
tomed to Asiatic mendacity would regard them as 
decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined 
victim is not counterfeited at the foot of some illeo;al 
compact, and if some treasonable paper is not 
slipped into a hiding-place in his house. Hastings 
was now regarded as helpless. The power to make 
or mar the fortune of every man in Bengal had 
passed, as it seemed, into the hands of the new 
Councillors. Immediately charges against the 
Governor-General began to pour in. They were 
eagerly welcomed by the majority, who, to do them 
justice, were men of too much honor knowingly to 
countenance false accusations, but who were not 
sufficiently acquainted with the East to be aware 
that, in that part of the world, a very little encour- 
agement from power will call forth, in a week, more 
Oateses, and Bedloes, and Dangerfields, than West- 
minster Hall sees in a century. 

It would have been strange indeed if, at such a 
juncture, Nuncomar had remained quiet. That bad 
man was stimulated at once by malignity, by avarice, 
and by ambition. Now was the time to be avenged 
on his old enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen 
years, to establish himself in the favor of the ma- 
jority of the Council, to become the greatest native 
in Bengal. From the time of the arrival of the new 
Councillors, he had paid the most marked court to 
them, and had in consequence been excluded, with 
all indignity, from the Government-house. He now 



WARE EN HASTINGS. 69 

put into the hands of Francis, with great ceremony, 
a paper, containing several charges of the most 
serious description. By this document Hastings 
was accused of putting offices up for sale, and of 
receiving bribes for suffering offenders to escape. 
In particular, it was alleged that Mahommed Reza 
Khan had been dismissed with impunity, in con- 
sideration of a great sum paid to the Governor- 
General. 

Francis read the paper in council. A violent 
altercation followed. Hastings complained in bitter 
terms of the way in which he was treated, spoke 
with contempt of Nuncomar and of Nuncomar's 
accusation, and denied the right of the Council to 
sit in judgment on the Governor. At the next meet- 
ing of the Board, another communication from 
Nuncomar was produced. He requested that he 
might be permitted to attend the Council, and that 
he might be heard in support of his assertions. An- 
other tempestuous debate took place. The Gov- 
ernor-General maintained that the council-room was 
not a proper place for such an investigation ; that 
from persons who were heated by daily conflict with 
him he could not expect the fairness of judges ; and 
that he could not, without betraying the dignity of 
his post, submit to be confronted with such a man 
as Nuncomar. The majority, however, resolved to 
go into the charges. Hastings rose, declared the 
sitting at an end, and left the room, followed by 
Barwell. The other members kept their seats, 



60 W ABB EN HASTINGS. 

voted themselves a council, put Clavering in the 
chair, and ordered Nuucomar to be called in. Nun- 
comar not only adhered to the original charges, but, 
after the fashion of the East, produced a large sup- 
plement. He stated that Hastings had received a 
great sum for appointing Rajah Goordas treasurer 
of the Nabob's household, and for committing the 
care of his Highness's person to the Munny Begum. 
He put in a letter purporting to bear the seal of the 
Munny Begum, for the purpose of establishing tlie 
truth of his story. The seal, whether forged, as 
Hastings affirmed, or genuine, as we are rather in- 
clined to believe, proved nothing. Nuncomar, as 
ever^^body knows who knows India, had only to tell 
the Munny Begum that such a letter would give 
pleasure to the majority of the Council, in order to 
procure her attestation. The majority, however, 
voted that the charge was made out ; that Hastings 
had corruptly received between thirty and forty 
thousand pounds ; and that he ought to be compelled 
to refund. 

The o;eneral feelinsf amons; the Eno-lish in Bens^al 
was strongly in favor of the Governor-General. In 
talents for business, in knowledge of the country, 
in general courtesy of demeanor, he was decidedly 
superior to his persecutors. The servants of the 
Company were naturall}^ disposed to side with the 
most distinguished member of their own body against 
a clerk from the War Office, who, profoundly igno- 
rant of the native lanouaoes and of the native char- 



WARREN HASTINGS. 61 

acter, took on himself to regulate every department 
of the administration. Hastings, however, in spite 
of the general sympathy of his countrymen, was in 
a most painful situation. There was still an appeal 
to higher authority in England. If that authority 
took part with his enemies, nothing was left to him 
but to throw up his office. He accordingly placed 
his resignation in the hands of his agent in London, 
Colonel Macleane. But Macleane was instructed 
not to produce the resignation, unless it should be 
fully ascertained that the feeling at the India House 
was adverse to the Governor-General. 

The triumph of Nuncomar seemed to be complete. 
He held a daily lev^e, to which his countrymen re- 
sorted in crowds, and to which, on one occasion, 
the majority of the Council condescended to repair. 
His house was an office for the purpose of receiv- 
ino; charo'cs against the Governor-General. It was 
said that, partly by threats, and partly by wheed- 
ling, the villauous Brahmin had induced many of 
the wealthiest men of the province to send in com- 
plaints. But he was playing a perilous game. It 
was not safe to drive to despair a man of such 
resources and of such determination as Hastings. 
Nuncomar, with all his acuteness, did not under- 
stand the nature of the institutions under which he 
lived. He saw that he had with him the majority 
of the body which made treaties, gave places, 
raised taxes. The separation between political and 
judicial functions was a thing of which he had no 



62 WABBEX HASTINGS. 

conception. It had probably never occurred to blm 
that there was in Bengal an authority perfectly in- 
dependent of the Council, an authority which could 
protect one whom the Council wished to destroy, 
and send to the gibbet one whom the Council wished 
to protect. Yet such was the fact. The Supreme 
Court was, within the sphere of its own duties, al- 
together independent of the Government. Hastings, 
with his usual sagacity, had seen how much advan- 
tage he might derive from possessing himself of this 
stronghold ; and he had acted accordingly. The 
judges, especially the Chief Justice, were hostile to 
the majority of the Council. The time had now 
come for putting this formidable machinery into 
action. 

On a sudden, Calcutta was astounded by the news 
that Nuncomar had been taken up on a charge of 
felony, committed, and thrown into the common 
gaol. The crime imputed to him was that six years 
before he had forged a bond. The ostensible prose- 
cutor was a native. But it was then, and still is, 
the opinion of everybody, idiots and biographers 
excepted, that Hastings was the real mover in the 
business. The rage of the majority rose to the 
highest point. They protested against the proceed- 
ings of the Supreme Court, and sent several urgent 
messages to the Judges, demanding that Nuncomar 
should be admitted to bail. The Judges returned 
haughty and resolute answers. All that the Council 
could do was to heap honors and emoluments on the 



WABEEN HASTINGS. ' 63 

family of Nuncomar ; and this they did. In the 
meantime the assizes commenced ; a true bill was 
found ; and Nuncomar was brought before Sir 
Elijah Impey and a jury composed of Englishmen. 
A great quantity of contradictory swearing, and the 
necessity of having every word of the evidence in- 
terpreted, protracted the trial to a most unusual 
length. At last a verdict of guilty was returned, 
and the Chief Justice pronounced sentence of death 
on the prisoner. 

That Impey ought to have respited Nuncomar 
we hold to be perfectly clears Whether the whole 
proceeding was not illegal, is a question. But it is 
certain, that whatever may have been, according to 
teclmical rules of construction, the effect of the 
statute under which the trial took place, it was 
most unjust to hang a Hindoo for forgery. The law 
which made forgery capital in England was passed 
without the smallest reference to the state of society 
in India. It was unknown to the natives of India. 
It had never been put in execution among them, cer- 
tainly not for want of delinquents. It was in the 
highest degree shocking to all their notions. They 
wcx'-e not accustomed to the distinction which many 
circumstances, peculiar to our own state of society, 
have led us to make between forgery and other 
kinds of cheating. The counterfeiting of a seal 
was, in their estimation, a common act of swindling ; 
nor had it ever crossed their minds that it was to be 
punished as severely as gang-robbery or assassina- 



64 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

tion. A just judge would, beyond all doubt, have 
reserved the case for the consideration of the sover- 
eign. But Impey would not hear of mercy or 
delay. 

The excitement among all classes was great. 
Francis and Francis's few English adherents de- 
scribed the Governor-General and the Chief Justice 
as the worst of murderers. Clavering, it was said, 
swore that, even at the foot of the gallows, Nunco- 
mar should be rescued. The bulk of the European 
society, though strongly attached to the Governor- 
General, could not but feel compassion for a man 
who, with all his crimes, had so long filled so large 
a space in their sight, who had been great and pow- 
erful before the British Empire in India began to 
exist, and to whom, in the old times, governors and 
members of council, then mere commercial factors, 
had paid court for protection. The feeling of the 
Hindoos was infinitely stronger. They were, indeed, 
not a people to strike one blow for their country- 
man. But his sentence filled them with sorrow and 
dismay. Tried even by their low standard of mo- 
rality, he was a bad man. But, bad as he was, he 
was the head of their race and religion, a Brahmin 
of the Brahmins. He had inherited the purest and 
highest caste. He had practised with the greatest 
punctuality all those ceremonies to which the super- 
stitious Bengalees ascribe far more importance than 
to the correct discharge of the social duties. They 
felt, therefore, as a devout Catholic in the dark ages 



WARREN HASTINGS. 65 

would have felt at seeing a prelate of the highest 
dignity sent to the gallows by a secular tribunal. 
Accordino; to their old national laws, a Brahmin 
could not be put to death for any crime whatever. 
And the crime for which Nuncomar was about to 
die was regarded by them in much the same light in 
which the selling of an unsound horse for a sound 
price is regarded by a Yorkshire jockey. 

The Mussulmans alone appear to have seen with 
exultation the fate of the powerful Hindoo, who had 
attempted to rise by means of the ruin of Mahom- 
med Reza Khan. The Mahommedan historian of 
those times takes delight in aggravating the charge. 
He assures us that in Nuncomar's house a casket 
was found containing counterfeits of the seals of all 
the richest men of the province. We have never 
fallen in with any other authority for this story, 
which in itself is by no means improbable. 

The day drew near ; and Nuncomar prepared 
himself to die with that quiet fortitude with which 
the Bengalee, so effeminately timid in personal con- 
flict, often encounters calamities for which there is 
no remedy. The sheriff, with the humanity which is 
seldom wanting in an English gentleman, visited the 
prisoner on the eve of the execution, and assured 
him that no indulgence consistent with the law 
should be refused to him. Nuncomar expressed his 
gratitude with great politeness and unaltered com- 
posure. Not a muscle of his face moved. Not a 
sigh broke from him. He put his finger to his fore- 



66 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

head, and calmly said that fate would have its way, 
and that there was no resisting the pleasure of God. 
He sent his compliments to Francis, Clavering, and 
Monson, and charged them to protect Rajah Goor- 
das, who was about to become the head of the 
Brahmins of Bengal. The sheriff withdrew, greatly 
agitated by what had passed, and Nuncomar sat 
composedly down to write notes and examine ac- 
counts. 

The next morning, before the sun was in his 
power, an immense concourse assembled round the 
place where the gallows had been set up. Grief and 
horror were on every face ; yet to the last the multi- 
tude could hardly believe that the English really 
purposed to take the life of the great Brahmin. At 
length the mournful procession came through the 
crowd. Nuncomar sat up in his palanquin, and 
looked round him with unaltered serenity. He had 
just parted from those who were most nearly con- 
nected with him. Their cries and contortions had 
appalled the European ministers of justice, but had 
not produced the smallest effect on the iron stoicism 
of the prisoner. The only anxiety which he ex- 
pressed was that men of his own priestly caste might 
be in attendance to take charge of his corpse. He 
again desired to be remembered to his friends in the 
Council, mounted the scaffold with firmness, and 
gave the signal to the executioner. The moment 
that the drop fell, a howl of sorrow and despair 
rose from the innumerable spectators. Hundreds 



W ABB EN HASTINGS. 67 

turned away their faces from the polluting sight, 
fled with loud wailings towards the Hoogley, and 
plunged into its holy waters, as if to purify them- 
selves from the guilt of having looked on such a 
crime. These feelings were not confined to Cal- 
cutta. The whole province was greatly excited ; 
and the population of Dacca, in particular, gave 
strong signs of grief and dismay. 

Of Impey's conduct it is impossible to speak too 
severely. We have already said that, in our opin- 
ion, he acted unjustly in refusing to respite Nunco- 
mar. No rational man can doubt that he took this 
course in order to gratify the Governor-General. 
If we had ever had any doubts on that point, they 
would have been dispelled by a letter which Mr. 
Gleig has published. Hastings, three or four years 
later, described Impey as the man " to whose support 
he was at one time indebted for the safety of his 
fortune, honor, and reputation." These strong 
words can refer only to the case of Nuncomar ; and 
they must mean that Impey hanged Nuncomar in 
order to support Hastings. It is therefore our de- 
liberate opinion that Impey, sitting as a judge, put 
a man unjustly to death in order to serve a political 
purpose. 

But we look on the conduct of Hastings in a 
somewhat different lio;ht. He was struo-o-lingj for 
fortune, honor, liberty, all that makes life valuable. 
He was beset by rancorous and unprincipled ene- 
mies. From his colleagues he could expect no 



68 WARREN HASTINGS. 

justice. He cannot be blamed for wishing to crush 
his accusers. He was indeed bound to use only 
legitimate means for that end. But it was not 
strange that he should have thought any means 
legitimate which were pronounced legitimate by the 
sages of the law, by men whose peculiar duty it was 
to deal justly between adversaries, and whose edu- 
cation might be supposed to have peculiarly quali- 
fied them for the discharge of that duty. Nobody 
demands from a party the unbending equity of a 
judge. The reason that judges are appointed is, 
that even a good man cannot be trusted to decide a 
cause in which he is himself concerned. Not a day 
passes on which an honest prosecutor does not ask 
for what none but a dishonest tribunal would grant. 
It is too much to expect that any man, when his 
dearest interests are at stake, and his strongest pas- 
sions excited, will, as against himself, be more just 
than the sworn dispensers of justice. To take an 
analagous case from the history of our own island ; 
suppose that Lord Stafford, when in the Tower on 
suspicion of being concerned in the Popish plot, had 
been apprised that Titus Gates had done something 
which might, by a questionable construction, be 
brought under the head of felony. Should we 
severely blame Lord Stafford, in the supposed case, 
for causing a prosecution to be instituted, for fur- 
nishing funds, for using all his influence to intercept 
the mercy of the Crown? We think not. If a 
judge, indeed, from favor to the Catholic lords, 



WARBEN HASTINGS, 69 

were to strain the law in order to hang Oates, such 
a judge would richly desen^e impeachment. But it 
does not appear to us that the Catholic lord, by 
bringing the case before the judge for decision, 
would materially overstep the limits of a just self- 
defence. 

While, therefore, we have not the least doubt that 
this memorable execution is to be attributed to 
Hastings, we doubt whether it can with justice be 
reckoned among his crimes. That his conduct was 
dictated by a profound policy is evident. He was in 
a minority in Council. It was possible that he might 
long be in a minority. He knew the native character 
well. He knew in what abundance accusations are 
certain to flow in against the most innocent inhabit- 
ant of India who is under the frown of power. 
There was not in the whole black population of 
Bengal a place-holder, a place-hunter, a government 
tenant, who did not think that he might better 
himself by sending up a deposition against the Gov- 
ernor-General. Under these circumstances, the per- 
secuted statesman resolved to teach the whole crew 
of accusers and witnesses, that, though in a minority 
at the council-board, he was still to be feared. 
The lesson which he gave them was indeed a lesson 
not to be forgotten. The head of the combination 
which had been formed against him, the richest, the 
most powerful, the most artful of the Hindoos, dis- 
tinguished by the favor of those who then held the 
government, fenced round by the superstitious rever- 



70 WABREN HASTINGS. 

enee of millions, was hanged in broad day before 
many thousands of people. Everj^thing that could 
make the warning impressive, dignity in the suf- 
ferer, solemnity in the proceeding, was found in this 
case." The helpless rage and vain struggles of the 
Council made the triumph more signal. From that 
moment the conviction of every native was that it 
was safer to take the part of Hastings in a minority 
than that of Francis in a majority, and that he who 
was so venturous as to join in running down the 
Governor-General might chance, in the phrase of 
the Eastern poet, to find a tiger while beating the 
jungle for a deer. The voices of a thousand in- 
formers were silenced in an instant. From that 
time, whatever difficulties Hastings might have to 
encounter, he was never molested by accusations 
from natives of India. 

It is a remarkable circumstance that one of the 
letters of Hastings to Dr. Johnson bears date a very 
few hours after the death of Nuncomar. While the 
whole settlement was in commotion, while a mighty 
and ancient priesthood were weeping over the re- 
mains of their chief, the conqueror in that deadly 
grapple sat down, with characteristic self-possession, 
to write about the Tour to the Hebrides, Jones's 
Persian Grammar, and the history, traditions, arts, 
and natural productions of India. 

In the meantime, intelligence of the Rohilla war, 
and of the first disputes between Hastings and his 
colleagues, had reached London. The Directors 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 71 

took "part with the majority, and sent out a letter 
filled with severe reflections on the conduct of Hast- 
ings. They condemned, in strong but just terms, 
the iniquity of undertaking offensive wars merely 
for the sake of pecuniary advantage. But they 
utterly forgot that, if Hastings had by illicit means 
obtained pecuniary advantages, he had done so, not 
for his own benefit, but in order to meet their de- 
mands. To enjoin honesty, and to insist on having 
what could not be honestly got, was then the con- 
stant practice of the Company. As Lady Macbeth 
says of her husband, they '' would not play false, 
and yet would wrongly win." 

The Regulating Act, by which Hastings had been 
appointed Governor-General for five years, em- 
powered tht, Crown to remove him on an address 
from the Company. Lord North was desirous to 
procure such an address. The three members of 
Council who had been sent out from England were 
men of his own choice. General Clavering, in par- 
ticular, was supported b}" a large parliamentary 
connection, such as no cabinet could be inclined to 
disoblige. The wish of the minister was to displace 
Hastings, and to put Clavering at the head of the 
government. In the Court of Directors parties was 
very nearly balanced. Eleven voted against Hast- 
ings ; ten for him. The Court of Proprietors was 
then convened. The great sale-room presented a 
singular appearance. Letters had been sent by the 
Secretary of the Treasury, exhorting all the sup- 



72 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

porters of government who held India stock to 
be in attendance. Lord Sandwich marshalled the 
friends of the administration with his usual dexterity 
and alertness. Fifty peers and privy councillors, 
seldom seen so far eastward, were counted in the 
crowd. The debate lasted till midnight. The op- 
ponents of Hastings had a small superiority on the 
division ; but a ballot was demanded ; and the result 
was that the Governor-General triumphed by a 
majority of above a hundred votes over the com- 
bined efforts of the Directors and the Cabinet. The 
ministers were greatly exasperated by this defeat. 
Even Lord North lost his temper, no ordinary occur- 
rence with him, and threatened to convoke parliament 
before Christmas, and to bring in a bill for depriv- 
ing the Company of all political power, and for re- 
stricting it to its old business of trading in silks and 
teas. 

Colonel Macleane, who through all this conflict 
had zealously supported the cause of Hastings, now 
thought that his employer was in imminent danger 
of being turned out, branded with parliamentary 
censure, perhaps prosecuted. The opinion of the 
Crown lawyers had already been taken respect- 
ing some parts of the Governor-General's conduct. 
It seenied to be high time to think of securing 
an honorable retreat. Under these circumstances, 
Macleane thought himself justified in producing the 
resignation with which he had been intrusted. The 
instrument was not in very accurate form ; but the 



WAREEN HASTINGS. 73 

Directors were too eager to be scrupulous. They 
accepted the resignation, fixed on Mr. Wheler, one 
of their own body, to succeed Hastings, and sent 
out orders that General Clavering, as senior mem- 
ber of Council, should exercise the functions of 
Governor-General till Mr, Wheler should arrive. 

But, while these things were passing in England, 
a great change had taken place in Bengal. Monson 
was no more. Only four members of the govern- 
ment were left. Clavering and Francis were on 
one side, Barwell and the Governor-General on the 
other ; and the Governor-General had the casting 
vote. Hastings, who had been during two years 
destitute of all power and patronage, became at once 
absolute. He instantly proceeded to retaliate on his 
adversaries. Their measures were reversed : their 
creatures were displaced. A new valuation of the 
lands of Bengal, for the purpose of taxation, was 
ordered ; and it was provided that the whole inquiry 
should be conducted by the Governor-General, and 
that all the letters relating to it should run in his 
name. He began, at the same time, to revolve vast 
plans of conquest and dominion, plans which he 
lived to see realized, though not by himself. His 
project was to form subsidiary alliances with the 
native princes, particularly with those of Oude and 
Berar, and thus to make Britain the paramount 
power in India. While he was meditating these 
great designs, arrived the intelligence that he had 
ceased to be Governor-General, ^hat his resignation 



74 WABRE2^ HASTIJS'GS. 

had been accepted, that TVheler was coming out im- 
mediately, and that, till Wheler arrived, the chair 
was to be filled by Clavering. 

Had Hastings still been in a minority, he would 
probably have retked without a struggle ; but he was 
now the real master of British India, and he was not 
disposed to quit his high place. He asserted that 
he had never given any instructions which could 
warrant the steps taken at home. What his in- 
structions had been, he owned he had forgotten. If 
he had kept a copy of them, he had mislaid it. But 
he was certain that he had repeatedly declared to 
the Directors that he would not resign. He could 
not see how the court, possessed of that declaration 
from himself, could receive his resignation from 
the doubtful hands of an agent. If the resignation 
were invalid, all the proceedings which were founded 
on that resignation were null, and Hastings was 
still Governor-General. 

He afterwards affirmed that, though his agents 
had not acted in conformity with his instructions, he 
would, nevertheless, have held himself bound by 
their acts, if Clavering had not attempted to seize 
the supreme power by violence. Whether this as- 
sertion were or were not true, it cannot be doubted 
that the imprudence of Clavering gave Hastings an 
advantage. The General sent for the keys of the 
fort and of the treasury, took possession of the rec- 
ords, and held a council at which Francis attended. 
Hastings took the chair in another apartment, and 



WABEEN HASTINGS. 75 

Barwell sat with him. Each of the two parties had 
a plausible show of right. There was no authority 
entitled to their obedience within fifteen thousand 
miles. It seemed that there remained no way of 
settling the dispute except an appeal to arms ; and 
from such an appeal, Hastings, confident of his 
influence over his countrymen in India, was not 
inclined to shrink. He directed the officers of the 
garrison at Fort William, and of all the neighboring 
stations, to obey no orders but his. At the same 
time, with admirable judgment, he offered to submit 
the case to the Supreme Court, and to abide by its 
decision. By making this proposition he risked 
nothing ; yet it was a proposition which his oppo- 
nents could hardly reject. Nobody could be treated 
as a criminal for obeying what the judges should 
solemnly pronounce to be the lawful government. 
The boldest man would shrink from taking arms 
in defence of what the judges should pronounce to 
be usurpation. Clavering and Francis, after some 
delay, unwillingly consented to abide by the award 
of the court. The court pronounced that the resig- 
nation was invalid, and that therefore Hastings was 
still Governor-General under the Eegulating Act ; 
and the defeated members of the Council, finding 
that the sense of the whole settlement was against 
them, acquiesced in the decision. 

About this time arrived the news that, after a suit 
which had lasted several years, the Franconian courts 
had decreed a divorce between Imhoff and his wife. 



76 WABBEN HASTINGS, 

The Baron left Calcutta, carrying with him the 
means of buying an estate in Saxony. The lady 
became Mrs. Hastings. The event was celebrated 
by great festivities ; and all the most conspicuous 
persons of Calcutta, without distinction of parties, 
were invited to the Government-house. Clavering, 
as the Mahommedan chronicler tells the story, was 
sick in mind and body, and excused himself from 
joining the splendid assembly. But Hastings, 
whom, as it should seem, success in ambition and 
in love had put into high good-humor, would take 
no denial. He went himself to the General's 
house, and at length brought his vanquished rival 
in triumph to the gay circle which surrounded the 
bride. The exertion was too much for a frame 
broken by mortification as well as by disease, 
Clavering died a few days later. 

"Wheler, who came out expecting to be Governor- 
General, and was forced to content himself with a 
seat at the council-board, generally voted with 
Francis. But the Governor-General, with Barwell's 
help and his own casting vote, was still the master. 
Some change took place at this time, in the feeling 
both of the Court of Directors and of the Ministers 
of the Crown. All designs against Hastings were 
dropped ; and, when his original term of five years 
expired, he was quietly reappointed. The truth is, 
that the fearful dangers to which the public interests 
in every quarter were now exposed, made both Lord 
North and the Company unwilling to part with a 



WARBEN HASTINGS. 77 

Governor whose talents, experience, and resolution, 
enmity itself was compelled to acknowledge. 

The crisis was indeed formidable. That great and 
victorious empire, on the throne of which George the 
Third had taken his seat eighteen years before, with 
brighter hopes than had attended the accession of 
any of the long line of English sovereigns, had, by 
the most senseless misgovernment, been brought to 
the verge of ruin. In America, millions of Eng- 
lishmen were at war with the country from which 
their blood, their language, their religion, and their 
institutions were derived, and to which, but a short 
time before, they had been as strongly attached as 
the inhabitants of Norfolk and Leicestershire. The 
great powers of Europe, humbled to the dust by 
the vigor and genius which had guided the councils 
of George the Second, now rejoiced in the prospect 
of a signal revenge. The time was approaching 
when our Island, while struggling to keep down 
the United States of America, and pressed with a 
still nearer danger by the too just discontents of 
Ireland, was to be assailed by France, Spain, and 
Holland, and to be threatened by the armed neu- 
trality of the Baltic ; when even our maritime su- 
premacy was to be in jeopardy ; when hostile fleets 
were to command the Straits of Calpe and the Mex- 
ican Sea ; when the British flag was to be scarcely 
able to protect the British Channel. Great as were 
the faults of Hastings, it was happy for our country 
that at that conjuncture, the most terrible through 



78 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

which she has ever passed, he was the ruler of her 
Indian dominions. 

An attack by sea on Bengal was little to be appre- 
hended. The danger was that the European enemies 
of England might form an alliance with some native 
power, might furnish that power with troops, arms, 
and ammunition, and might thus assail our posses- 
sions on the side of the land. It was chiefly from 
the Mahrattas that Hastings anticipated danger. 
The original seat of that singular people was the 
wild range of hills which runs along tlie western 
coast of India. In the reign of Aurungzebe, the in- 
habitants of those regions, led by the great Sevajee, 
began to descend on the possessions of their wealth- 
ier and less warlike neighbors. The energy, ferocity, 
and cunning of the Mahrattas soon made them the 
most conspicuous among the new powers which were 
generated by the corruption of the decaying monarchy. 
At first they were only robbers. They soon rose to 
the dignity of conquerors. Half the provinces of 
the empire were turned into Mahratta principalities. 
Freebooters, sprung from low castes, and accustomed 
to menial employments, became mighty Rajahs. 
The Bonslas, at the head of a band of plunderers, 
occupied the vast region of Berar. The Guicowar, 
which is, being interpreted, the Herdsman, founded 
that dynasty which still reigns in Guzerat. The 
houses of Scindia and Holkar waxed great in Malwa. 
One adventurous captain made his nest on the im- 
pregnable rock of Gooti. Another became the lord 



WABREN HASTINGS. 79 

of the thousand villages which are scattered among 
the green rice-fields of Tanjore. 

That was the time throughout India of double 
government. The form and the power were every- 
where separated. The Mussulman Nabobs who had 
become sovereign princes, the Vizier in Oude, and 
the Nizam at Hyderabad, still called themselves the 
viceroys of the house of Tamerlane. In the same 
manner the Mahratta states, though really independ- 
ent of each other, pretended to be members of one 
empire. They all acknowledged, by words and cer- 
emonies, the supremacy of the heir of Sevajee, a roi 
faineant^ who chewed bang and toyed with dancing 
girls in a state prison at Sattara, and of his Peshwa 
or mayor of the palace, a great hereditary magistrate, 
who kept a court with kingly state at Poonah, and 
whose authority was obeyed in the spacious provinces 
of Aurungabad and Bejapoor. 

Some months before war was declared in Europe 
the government of Bengal was alarmed by the news 
that a French adventurer, who passed for a man of 
quality, had arrived at Poonah. It was said that he 
had been received there with great distinction, that 
he had delivered to the Peshwa letters and presents 
from Louis the Sixteenth, and that a treaty, hostile 
to England, had been concluded between France and 
the Mahrattas. 

Hastings immediately resolved to strike the first 
blow. The title of the Peshwa was not undisputed. 
A portion of the Mahratta nation was favorable to a 



80 WARREN HASTINGS. 

pretender. The Governor-General determined to 
espouse this pretender's interest, to move an army 
across the peninsula of India, and to form a close 
alliance with the chief of the house of Bonsla, who 
ruled Berar, and who, in power and dignity, was 
inferior to none of the Mahratta princes. 

The army had marched, and the negotiations with 
Berar were in progress, when a letter from the 
English consul at Cairo brought the news that war 
had been proclaimed both in London and Paris. All 
the measures which the crisis required were adopted 
by Hastings without a moment's delay. The French 
factories in Bengal were seized. Orders were sent 
to Madras that Pondwaerry should instantly be occu- 
pied. Near Calcu^a works were thrown up which 
were thought to render the approach of a hostile 
force impossible. A maritime establishment was 
formed for the defence of the river. Nine new bat- 
talions of sepoys were raised, and a corps of native 
artillery was formed out of the hardy Lascars of the 
Bay of Bengal. Having made these arrangements, 
the Governor-General,- with calm confidence, pro- 
nounced his presidency secure from all attack, unless 
the Mahrattas should march against it in conjunction 
with the French. 

The expedition which Hastings had sent westward 
was not so speedily or completely successful as most 
of his undertakings. The commanding officer pro- 
crastinated. The authorities at Bombay blundered. 
But the Governor-General persevered. A new com- 



WARREN HASTINGS. 81 

mander repaired the errors of his predecessor. Sev- 
eral brilliant actions spread the military renown of 
the English through regions where no European flag 
had ever been seen. It is probable that, if a new 
and more formidable danger had not compelled 
Hastings to change his whole policy, his plans re- 
specting the Mahratta empire would have been 
carried into complete effect. 

The authorities in England had wisely sent out to 
Bengal, as commander of the forces and member of 
the Council, one of the most distinguished soldiers 
of that time. Sir Eyre Coote had, many years 
before, been conspicuous among the founders of the 
British empire in the East. At the council of war 
which preceded the battle of Plassey, he earnestly 
recommended, in opposition to the majority, that 
daring course which, after some hesitation, was 
adopted, and which was crowned with such splendid 
success. He subsequently commanded in the south 
of India against the brave and unfortunate Lally, 
gained the decisive battle of Wandewash over the 
French and their native allies, took Pondicherry, 
and made the English power supreme in the Car- 
natic. Since these great exploits near twenty years 
had elapsed. Coote had no longer the bodily ac- 
tivity which he had shown in earlier days ; nor was 
the vigor of his mind altogether unimpaired. He 
was capricious and fretful, and required much coax- 
ing to keep him in good humor. It must, we fear, 
be added that the love of money had grown upon 



82 WABBEN HASTINGS, 

him, and tliat he thought more about his allowances, 
and less about his duties, than might have been ex- 
pected from so eminent a member of so noble a 
profession. Still he was perhaps the ablest officer 
that was then to be found in the British army. 
Among the native soldiers his name was great and 
his influence unrivalled. Nor is he yet forgotten by 
them. Now and then a white-bearded old sepoy 
may still be found who loves to talk of Porto Novo 
and Pollilore. It is but a short time since one of 
those aged men came to present a memorial to an 
English officer, who holds one of the highest em- 
ployments in India. A print of Coote hung in the 
room. The veteran recognized at once that face 
and figure which. he had not seen for more than half 
a century, and, forgetting his salaam to the living, 
halted, drew himself up, lifted his hand, and with 
solemn reverence paid his military obeisance to the 
dead. 

Coote, though he did not, like Barwell, vote con- 
stantly with the Governor-General, was by no 
means inclined to join in sj^stematic opposition, and 
on most questions concurred with Hastings, who did 
his best, by assiduous courtship, and by readily 
granting the most exorbitant allowances, to gratify 
the strongest passions of the old soldier. 

It seemed likely at this time that a general recon- 
ciliation would put an end to the quarrels which had, 
during some years, weakened and disgraced the 
government of Bengal. The dangers of the empire 



WARREN HASTINGS. 83 

might well induce men of patriotic feeling (and of 
patriotic feeling neither Hastings nor Francis was 
destitute) to forget private enmities and to co- 
operate heartily for the general good. Coote had 
never been concerned in faction. Wheler was thor- 
oughly tired of it. Barwell had made an ample for- 
tune, and, though he had promised that he would 
not leave Calcutta while his help was needed in 
Council, was most desirous to return to England, 
and exerted himself to promote an arrangement 
which would set him at liberty. 

A compact was made, by which Francis agreed to 
(Jesist from opposition, and Hastings engaged that 
the friends of Francis should be admitted to a fair 
share of the honors and emoluments of the service. 
During a few months after this treaty there was ap- 
parent harmony at the council-board. 

Harmony, indeed, was never more necessary ; for 
at this moment internal calamities, more formidable 
than war itself, menaced Bengal. The authors of 
the Regulating Act of 1773 had established two in- 
dependent powers, the one judicial, and the other 
political ; and, with a carelessness scandalously 
common in English legislation, had omitted to define 
the limits of either. The judges took advantage of 
the indistinctness, and attempted to draw to them- 
selves supreme authority, not only within Calcutta, 
but through the whole of the great territory subject 
to the Presidency of Fort William. There are few 
Englishmen who will not admit that the English law, 



84 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

in spite of modern improvements, is neither so chea|3 
nor so speedy as might be wished. Still, it is a sys- 
tem which has grown up among us. In some 
points it has been fashioned to suit our feelings ; in 
others, it has gradually fashioned our feelings to suit 
itself. Even to its worst evils we are accustomed ; 
and therefore, though we may complain of them, 
they do not strike us with the horror and dismay 
which would be produced by a new grievance of 
smaller severity. In India the case is widely differ- 
ent. English law, transplanted to that country, has 
all the vices from which we suffer here ; it has them 
all in a far higher degree ; and it has other vices, 
compared with which the worst vices from which we 
suffer are trifles. Dilatory here, it is far more dila- 
tory in a land where the help of an interpreter is 
needed by every judge and by every advocate. 
Costly here, it is far more costly in a land into 
which the legal practitioners must be imported from 
an immense distance. All English labor in India, 
from the labor of the Governor-General and the 
Commander-in-Chief, down to that of a groom or a 
watchmaker, must be paid for at a higher rate than 
at home. No man will be banished, and banished 
to the torrid zone, for nothing. The rule holds 
good with respect to the legal profession. No 
English barrister will work, fifteen thousand miles 
from all his friends, with the thermometer ninety-six 
in the shade, for the emoluments which will content 
him in chambers that overlook the Thames. Ac- 



WABREN HASTINGS. S5 

cordingly, the fees at Calcutta are about three times 
as great as the fees of Westminster Hall; and this, 
though the people of India are, beyond all compari- 
son, poorer than the people of England. Yet the 
delay and the expense, grievous as they are, form 
the smallest part of the evil which English law, im- 
ported without modifications into India, could not 
fail to produce. The strongest feelings of our 
nature, honor, religion, female modesty, rose up 
against the innovation. Arrest on mesne process 
was the first step in most civil proceedings ; and to 
a native of rank arrest was not merely a restraint, 
but a foul personal indignity. ]' Oaths were required 
in every stage of every suit ; and the feeling of a 
Quaker about an oath is hardly stronger than that of 
a respectable native. That the apartments of a 
woman of quality should be entered by strange men, 
or that her face should be seen by them, are, in the 
East, intolerable outrages, outrages which are more 
dreaded than death, and which can be expiated only 
by the shedding of blood. To these outrages the 
most distinguished families of Bengal, Bahar, and 
Orissa were now exposed. Imagine what the state 
of our own country would be, if a jurisprudence 
were on a sudden introduced among us, which 
should be to us what our jurisprudence was to our 
Asiatic subjects. Imagine what the state of our 
country would be, if it were enacted that any man, 
by merely swearing that a debt was due to him, 
should acquire a right to insult the persons of men 



i 



86 WAEEEN HASTINGS. 

of the most honorable and sacred callings, and of 
women of the most shrinking delicacy, to horsewhip 
a general officer, to put a bishop in the stocks, to 
treat ladies in a way which called forth the blow of 
A¥at Tyler. Something like this was the effect of 
the attempt which the Supreme Court made to ex- 
tend its jurisdiction over the whole of the Com- 
pany's territor}^ 

A reign of terror began, of terror heightened by 
mystery ; for even that which was endured was less 
horrible than that which was anticipated. No man 
knew what was next to be expected from this strange 
tribunal. It came from beyond the black water, as 
the people of India, with mysterious horror, call the 
sea. It consisted of judges not one of whom was 
familiar with the usages of the millions over whom 
they claimed boundless authority. Its records were 
kept in unknown characters ; its sentences were pro- 
nounced in unknown sounds. It had already collected 
round itself an army of the worst part of the native 
population, informers, and false witnesses, and com- 
mon barrators, and agents of chicane, and above all, 
a banditti of bailiff 's followers, compared with whom 
the retainers of the worst English sponging-houses, 
in the worst times, might be considered as upright 
and tender-hearted. Many natives, highly consid- 
ered among their countrymen, were seized, hurried 
up to Calcutta, flung into the common gaol, not for 
any crime even imputed, not for any debt that had 
been proved, but merely as a precaution till their 



WARREN HASTINGS. 87 

cause should come to trial. There were instances in 
which men of the most venerable dignity, persecuted 
without a cause by extortioners, died of rage and 
shame in the gripe of the vile alguazils of Impey. 
The harems of noble Mahommedans, sanctuaries 
respected in the East by governments which respected 
nothing else, were burst open by gangs of bailiffs. 
The Mussulmans, braver and less accustomed to 
submission than the Hindoos, sometimes stood on 
their defence ; and there were instances in which 
they shed their blood in the doorway, while defend- 
ing, sword in hand, the sacred apartments of their 
women. Nay, it seemed as if even the faint-hearted 
Bengalee, who had crouched at the feet of Surajah 
Dowlah, who had been mute during the administra- 
tion of Vansittart, would at length find courage in 
despair. No Mahratta invasion had ever spread 
through the province such dismay as this inroad of 
English lawyers. All the injustice of former oppress- 
ors, Asiatic and European, appeared as a blessing 
when compared with the justice of the Supreme 
Court. 

Every class of the population, English and native, 
with the exception of the ravenous pettifoggers who 
fattened on the misery and terror of an immense 
community, cried out loudly against this fearful 
oppression. But the judges were immovable. If a 
bailiff was resisted, they ordered the soldiers to be 
called out. If a servant of the Company, in con- 
formity with the orders of the government, withstood 



i 



88 WAREEN HASTINGS. 

the miserable catchpoles who, with Impey's writs in 
their hands, exceeded the insolence and rapacity of 
gang-robbers, he was flung into prison for a con- 
tempt. The lapse of sixty years, the virtue and 
wisdom of many eminent magistrates who have during 
that time administered justice in the Supreme Court, 
have not effaced from the minds of the people of 
Bengal the recollection of those evil days. 

The members of the government were, on this 
subject, united as one man. Hastings had courted 
the judges ; he had found them useful instruments'; 
but he was not disposed to make them his own 
masters, or the masters of India. His mind was 
large ; his knowledge of the native character most 
accurate. He saw that the system pursued by the 
Supreme Court was degrading to the government 
and ruinous to the people ; and he resolved to oppose 
it manfully. The consequence was, that the friend- 
ship, if that be the proper word for such a connection, 
which had existed between him and Impey was for a 
time completely dissolved. The government placed 
itself firmly between the tyrannical tribunal and the 
people. The Chief Justice proceeded to the wildest 
excesses." The Governor-General and all the mem- 
bers of Council were served with writs, calling on 
them to appear before the King's justices, and to 
answer for their public acts. This was too much. 
Hastings, with just scorn, refused to obey the call, 
set at liberty the persons wrongfully detained by the 
Court, and took measures for resisting the outrageous 



WARBEN HASTINGS, 89 

proceediDgs of the sheriff's officers, if necessary, by 
the sword. But he had in view another device, 
which might prevent the necessity of an appeal to 
arms. He was seldom at a loss for an expedient ; 
and he knew Impey well. The expedient, in this 
case, was a very simple one, neither more nor less 
than a bribe. Impey was, by act of parliament, a 
judge, independent of the government of Bengal, 
and entitled to a salary of eight thousand a year. 
Hastings proposed to make him also a judge in the 
Company's service, removable at the pleasure of the 
government of Bengal ; and to give him, in that 
capacity, about eight thousand a year more. It was 
understood that, in consideration of this new salary, 
Impey would desist from urging the high pretensions 
of his court. If he did urge these pretensions, the 
government could, at a moment's notice, eject him 
from the new place which had been created for him. 
The bargain was struck ; Bengal was saved ; an 
appeal to force was averted ; and the Chief Justice 
was rich, quiet, and infamous. 

/ Of Impey's conduct it is unnecessary to speak. 

(it was of a piece with almost every part of his 

/conduct that comes under the notice of histor}^ 

.' No other such judge has dishonored the English 

' ermine, since Jefferies drank himself to death in the 

Tower. But we cannot agree with those who have 

blamed Hastings for this transaction. The case 

stood thus. The negligent manner in which the 

Regulating Act had been framed put it in the power 



90 WARREN HASTINGS. 

of the Chief Justice to throw a great country into 
the most dreadful confusion. He was determined 
to use his power to the utmost, unless he was paid 
to be still ; and Hastings consented to pay him. 
The necessity was to be deplored. It is also to be 
deplored that pirates should be able to exact ransom, 
by threatening to make their captives walk the 
plank. But to ransom a captive from pirates has 
always been held a humane and Christian act ; and 
it would be absurd to charge the payer of the ransom 
with corrupting the virtue of the corsair. This, 
we seriously tliink, is a not unfair illustration of the 
relative position of Impey, Hastings, and the people 
of India. Whether it was right in Impey to demand 
or to accept a price for powers which, if they really 
belonged to him, he could not abdicate, which, if 
they did not belong to him, he ought never to have 
usurped, and which in neither case he could honestly 
sell, is one question. It is quite another question 
whether Hastings was not right to give anj^^ sum, 
however large, to any man, however worthless, rather 
than either surrender millions of human beings to 
pillage, or rescue them by civil war. 

Francis strongly opposed this arrangement. It 
may, indeed, be suspected that personal aversion to 
Impey was as strong a motive with Francis as regard 
for the welfare of the province. To a mind burning 
with resentment, it might seem better to leave 
Bengal to the oppressors than to redeem it by en- 
riching them. It is not improbable, on the other 



W AH REN HASTINGS. 91 

hand, that Hastings may have been the more willing 
to resort to an expedient agreeable to the Chief 
Justice, because that high functionary had already 
been so serviceable, and might, when existing dis- 

/ensions were composed, be serviceable again. 
But it was not on this point alone that Francis was 
now opposed to Hastings. The peace between them 
proved to be only a short and hollow truce, during 
which their mutual aversion was constantly becom- 
ing stronger. At length an explosion took place. 
Hastings publicly charged Francis with having 
deceived him, and with having induced Bar well to 
quit the service by insincere promises. Then came a 
dispute, such as frequently arises even between honor- 
able men, when they may make important agree- 
ments by mere verbal communication. An impartial 
historian will probably be of opinion that they had 
misunderstood each other ; but their minds were so 
much embittered that they imputed to each other 
nothing less than deliberate villany. "I do not," 
said Hastings, in a minute recorded on the Consul- 
tations of the Governnent, " I do not trust to Mr. 
Francis's promises of candor, convinced that he is 
incapable of it. I judge of his public conduct by 
his private, which I have found to be void of truth 
and honor." After the Council had risen, Francis 
put a challenge into the Governor-General's hand. 
It was instantly accepted. They met, and fired. 
Francis was shot through the body. He was carried 
to a neighboring house, where it appeared that the 



92 WARREN HASTINGS. 

wound, though severe, was not mortal. Hastings 
inquh'ed repeatedly after his enemy's health, and 
proposed to call on him ; but Francis coldly declined 
the visit. He had a proper sense, he said, of the 
Governor-General's politeness, but could not consent 
to any private interview. They could meet only at 
the Council Board. 

In a very short time it was made signally manifest 
to how great a danger the Governor-General had, on 
this occasion, exposed his country. A crisis arrived 
with which he, and he alone, was competent to deal. 
It is not too much to say that, if he had been taken 
from the head of affairs, the years 1780 and 1781 
would have been as fatal to our power in Asia as to 
our power in America. 

The Mahrattas had been the chief objects of ap- 
prehension to Hastings. The measures which he 
had adopted for the purpose of breaking their power 
had at first been frustrated by the errors of those 
whom he was compelled to employ ; but his persever- 
ance and ability seemed likely to be crowned with 
success, when a far more formidable danger showed 
itself in a distant quarter. 

About thirty years before this time, a Mahom- 
medan soldier had begun to distinguish himself in 
the wars of Southern India. His education had 
been neglected ; his extraction was humble. His 
father had been a petty officer of revenue ; his 
grandfather a wandering dervise. But though thus 
meanly descended, though ignorant even of the 



WARREN HASTIJSfGS. 93 

alpliabet, the adventurer had no sooner been placed 
at the head of a body of troops than he approved 
himself a man born for conquest and command. 
Among the crowd of chiefs who were struggling 
for a share of India, none could compare with him 
in the qualities of the captain and the statesman. 
He became a general ; he became a sovereign. Out 
of the fragments of old principalities, which had 
gone to pieces in the general wreck, he formed for 
himself a great, compact, and vigorous empire. 
That empire he ruled with the ability, severity, and 
vi2;ilance of Lewis the Eleventh. Licentious in his 
pleasures, implacable in his revenge, he had yet en- 
largement of mind enough to perceive how much 
the prosperity of subjects adds to the strength of 
governments. He was an oppressor ; but he had 
at least the merit of protecting his people against 
all oppression except his own. He was now in ex- 
treme old age ; but his intellect was as clear, and 
his spirit as high, as in the prime of manhood. 
Such was the great Hyder Ali, the founder of the 
Mahommedan kingdom of Mysore, and the most 
formidable enemy with whom the English conquerors 
of Lidia have ever had to contend. 

Had Hastings been governor of Madras, Hj^der 
would have been either made a friend, or vigorously 
encountered as an enemy. Unhappily the English 
authorities in the south provoked their powerful 
neighbor's hostility, without being prepared to repel 
it. On a sudden, an army of ninety thousand men,- 



94 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

far superior in discipline and efficiencj^ to anjr other 
native force that could be found in India, came pour- 
ing through those wild passes which, worn by moun- 
tain torrents, and dark with jungle, led down from 
the table-land of Mj^sore to the plains of the Car- 
natic. This great armj^ was accompanied by a 
hundred pieces of cannon ; and its movements were 
guided by many French officers, trained in the best 
military schools of Europe. 

Hyder was everywhere triumphant. The sepoys 
in many British garrisons flung down their arms. 
Some forts were surrendered by treachery, and some 
by despair. In a few days the whole open country 
north of the Coleroon had submitted. The Eno;lish 
inhabitants of Madras could already see by night, 
from the top of Mount St. Thomas, the eastern sky 
reddened by a vast semicircle of blazing villages. 
The white villas, to which our countrymen retire 
after the daily labors of Government and of trade, 
when the "cool evening breeze springs up from the 
bay, were now left without inhabitants ; for bands 
of the fierce horsemen of Mysore had already been 
seen prowling among the tulip-trees, and near the 
gay A^erandas. Even the town was not thought 
secure, and the British merchants and public func- 
tionaries made haste to crowd themselves behind the 
cannon of Fort St. George. 

There were the means, indeed, of assembling an 
army which might have defended the presidency, 
and even driven the invader back to his mountams. 



WAIIBEN HASTINGS. 95 

Sir Hector Munro was at the head of one consider- 
able force ; Baillie was advancing with another. 
United, they might have presented a formidable 
front even to snch an enemy as Hyder. But the 
English commanders, neglecting those fundamental 
rules of the military art of which the propriety is 
obvious even to men who have never received a 
military education, deferred their junction, and 
were separately attacked. Baillie's detachment was 
destroyed. Munro was forced to abandon his bag- 
gage, to fling his guns into the tanks, and to save 
himself by a retreat which might be called a flight. 
In three weeks from the commencement of the war, 
the British empire in Southern India had been 
brought to the verge of ruin. Only a few fortified 
places remained to us. The glory of our arms had 
departed. It was known that a great French ex- 
pedition might soon be expected on the coast of 
Coromandel. England, beset by enemies on every 
side, was in no condition to protect such remote 
dependencies. 

Then it was that the fertile genius and serene 
courage of Hastings achieved their most signal tri- 
umph. A swift ship, flying before the south-west 
monsoon, brought the evil tidings in a few days to 
Calcutta. In twenty-four hours the Governor-Gen- 
eral had framed a complete plan of policy adapted to 
the altered state of affairs. The struggle with Hyder 
was a struggle for life and death. All minor objects 
must be sacrificed to the preservation of the Caruatic. 



96 WARBEN HASTINGS. 

The disputes with the Mahrattas must be accommo- 
dated. A large military force and a supply of money 
must be instantly sent to Madras. But even these 
measures would be insufficient, unless the war, hith- 
erto so grossly mismanaged, were placed under the 
direction of a vigorous mind. It was no time for 
trifling. Hastings determined to resort to an ex- 
treme exercise of power, to suspend the incapable 
governor of Fort St. George, to send Sir Eyre Coote 
to oppose Hyder, and to intrust that distinguished 
general with the whole administration of the war. 

In spite of the sullen opposition of Francis, who 
had now recovered from his wound, and had returned 
to the council, the Governor-General's wise and firm 
policy was approved by the majority of the board. 
The reinforcements were sent off with great expedi- 
tion, and reached Madras before the French arma- 
ment arrived in the Indian seas. Coote, broken by 
age and disease, was no longer the Coote of Wande- 
wash ; but he was still a resolute and skilful com- 
mander. The progress of HjTler was arrested ; and 
in a few months the great victory of Porto Novo 
retrieved the honor of the English arms. 

In the meantime Francis had returned to England, 
and Hastings was now left perfectly unfettered. 
Wheler had gradually been relaxing in his opposition, 
and, after the departure of his vehement and im- 
placable colleague, co-operated heartily with the 
Governor-General, whose influence over the British 
in India, always great, had, by the vigor aud sue- 



WARREN HASTINGS. 97 

cess of his recent measures, been considerably in- 
creased. 

But, though the difficulties arising from factions 
within the Council were at an end, another class of 
difficulties had become more pressing than ever. 
The financial embarrassment was extreme. Hastings 
had to find the means, not only of carrying on the 
government of Bengal, but of maintaining a most 
costly war against both Indian and European ene- 
mies in the Carnatic, and of making remittances to 
England. A few years before this time he had 
obtained relief by plundering the Mogul and enslav- 
ing the Rohillas ; nor were the resources of his 
fruitful mind by any means exhausted. 

His first design was on Benares, a city which in 
wealth, population, dignity, and sanctity, was among 
the foremost of Asia. It was commonly believed 
that half a million of human beings was crowded into 
that labyrinth of lofty alleys, rich with shrines, and 
minarets, and balconies, and carved oriels, to which 
the sacred apes clung by hundreds. The traveller 
could scarcely make his way through the press of 
holy mendicants and not less holy bulls. The 
broad and stately flights of steps which descended 
from these swarming haunts to the bathing-places 
along the Ganges were worn every day by the foot- 
steps of an innumerable multitude of worshippers. 
The schools and temples drew crowds of pious 
Hindoos from everj^ province where the Brahminical 
faith was known. Hundreds of devotees came 



98 WAEBEN HASTINGS. 

thither every month to die : for it was believed that 
a peculiarly happy fate awaited the man who should 
pass from the sacred city into the sacred river. Nor 
was superstition the only motive which allured 
strangers to that great metropolis. Commerce had 
as many pilgrims as religion. All along the shores 
of the venerable stream lay great fleets of vessels 
laden with rich merchandise. From the looms of 
Benares went forth the most delicate silks that 
adorned the balls of St. James's and of Versailles ; 
and in the bazaars, the muslins of Bengal and the 
sabres of Oude were mingled with the jewels of Gol- 
conda and the shawls of Cashmere. This rich cap- 
ital, and the surrounding tract, had long been under 
the immediate rule of a Hindoo prince, who rendered 
homage to the Mogul emperors. During the great 
anarchy of India, the lords of Benares became in- 
dependent of the court of Delhi, but were compelled 
to submit to the authority of the Nabob of Oude. 
Oppressed by this formidable neighbor, they invoked 
the protection of the English. The English protec- 
tion was given ; and at length the Nabob Vizier, by 
a solemn treaty, ceded all his rights over Benares to 
the Company. From that time the Eajah was the 
vassal of the Government of Bengal, acknowledged 
its supremacy, and engaged to send an annual trib- 
ute to Fort William. This tribute Cheyte Sing, the 
reigning prince, had paid with strict punctuality. 

About the precise nature of the legal relation be- 
tween the Company and the Rajah of Benares there 



WABREN HASTINGS. 99 

lias been much warm and acute controversy. On 
the one side, it has been maintained that Cheyte 
Sing* was merely a great subject on whom the su- 
perior power had a right to call for aid in the neces- 
sities of the empire. On the other side, it has been 
contended that he was an independent prince, that the 
only claim which the Company had upon him was for 
a fixed tribute, and that, while the fixed tribute was 
regularly paid, as it assuredly was, the English had 
no more right to exact any further contribution from 
him than to demand subsidies from Holland or 
Denmark. Nothing is easier than to find precedents 
and analoo:ies in favor of either view. 

Our own impression is that neither view is correct. 
It was too much the habit of English politicians to 
take it for granted that there was in India a known 
and definite constitution, by which questions of this 
kind were to be decided. The truth is that, during 
the interval which elapsed between the fall of the 
house of Tamerlaue and the establishment of the 
British ascendancy, there was no such constitution. 
The old order of things had passed away ; the new 
order of things was not yet formed. All was tran- 
sition, confusion, obscurity. Everybody kept his 
head as he best might, and scrambled for whatever 
he could get. There have been similar seasons in 
Europe. The time of the dissolution of the Carlo- 
vingian empire is an instance. Who would think 
of seriously discussing the question, what extent of 
pecuniary aid and of obedience Hugh Capet had a 



100 WARREN HASTINGS. 

constitutional right to demand from the Duke of 
Brittany or the Duke of Normandy? The words 
" constitutional right " had, in that state of society, 
no meaning. If Hugh Capet laid hands on all the 
possessions of the Duke of Normandy, this might 
be unjust and immoral ; but it would not be illegal 
in the sense in which the ordinances of Charles the 
Tenth were illegal. If, on the other hand, the Duke 
of Normandy made war on Hugh Capet, this might 
be unjust and immoral ; but it would not be illegal 
in the sense in which the expedition of Prince Louis 
Bonaparte was illegal. 

Very similar to this was the state of India sixty 
years ago. Of the existing governments not a 
single one could lay claim to legitimacy, or could 
plead any other title than recent occupation. There 
was scarcely a province in which the real sovereignty 
and the nominal sovereignty were not disjoined. 
Titles and forms were still retained, which implied 
that the heir of Tamerlane was an absolute ruler, 
and that the Nabobs of the provinces were his lieu- 
tenants. In reality, he was a captive. The Nabobs 
were in some places independent princes. In other 
places, as in Bengal and the Carnatic, they had, like 
their master, become mere phantoms, and the Com- 
pany was supreme. Among the Mahrattas, again, 
the heir of Sevajee still kept the title of Rajah ; 
but he was a prisoner, and his prime minister, the 
Peshwa, had become the hereditary chief of the state. 
The Peshwa, in his turn, was fast sinking into the 



WAREEN HASTINGS. 101 

same degraded situation into which he had reduced 
the Rajah. It was, we believe, impossible to find, 
from the Himalayas to Mysore, a single govern- 
ment which was at once a government cle facto and 
a government de jure, which possessed the physical 
means of making itself feared by its neighbors 
and subjects, and which had at the same time the 
authority derived from law and long prescription. 

Hastings clearly discerned what was hidden from 
most of his contemporaries, that such a state of 
things gave immense advantages to a ruler of great 
talents and few scruples. In every international 
question that could arise, he had his option between 
the cle facto ground and the de jure ground ; and 
the probability was that one of those grounds would 
sustain any claim that it might be convenient for him 
to make, and enable him to resist any claim made 
by others. In every controversy, accordingly, he 
resorted to the plea which suited his immediate pur- 
pose, without troubling himself in the least about 
consistency ; and thus he scarcely ever failed to find 
what, to persons of short memories and scanty in- 
formation, seemed to be a justification for what he 
wanted to do. Sometimes the Nabob of Bengal is 
a shadow, sometimes a monarch. Sometimes the 
Vizier is a mere deputy, sometimes an independent 
potentate o If it is expedient for the Company to 
show some legal title to the revenues of Bengal, the 
grant under the seal of the Mogul is brought forward 
as an instrument of the highest authority. When 



102 WABREN HASTINGS. 

the Mogul asks for the rents which were reserved to 
him by that very grant, he is told that he is a mere 
pageant, that the English power rests on a very 
different foundation from a charter given by him, 
that he is welcome to play at royalty as long as he 
likes, but that he must expect no tribute from the 
real masters of India. 

It is true that it was in the power of others, as 
well as of Hastings, to practise this legerdemain ; 
but in the controversies of governments, sophistry 
is of little use unless it be backed by power. There 
is a principle which Hastings was fond of asserting 
in the strongest terms, and on which he acted with 
undeviating steadiness. It is a principle which, we 
must own, though it may be grossly abused, can 
hardly be disputed in the present state of public law. 
It is this, that where an ambiguous question arises 
between two governments, there is, if they cannot 
agree, no appeal except to force, and that the opinion 
of the stronger must prevail. Almost every ques- 
tion was ambiguous in India. The English govern- 
ment was the strongest in India. The consequences 
are obvious. The English government might do 
exactly what it chose. 

- The English government now chose to wring 
money out of Cheyte Sing. It had formerly been 
convenient to treat him as a sovereign prince ; it was 
now convenient to treat him as a subject. Dexterity 
inferior to that of Hastings could easily find, in the 
general chaos of laws and customs, arguments for 



WABEEN HASTINGS. 103 

either course. Hastings wanted a great supply. It 
was known that Cheyte Sing had a large revenue, 
and it was suspected that he had accumulated a 
treasure. Nor was he a favorite at Calcutta. He 
had, when the Governor-General was in great dif- 
ficulties, courted the favor of Francis and Clavering. 
Hastings, who, less perhaps from evil passions than 
from policy, seldom left an injury unpunished, was 
not sorry that the fate of Cheyte Sing should teach 
neighboring princes the same lesson which the fate 
of Nuncomar had already impressed on the inhabit- 
ants of Bengal. 

In 1778, on the first breaking out of the war with 
France, Cheyte Sing was called upon to pay, in addi- 
tion to his fixed tribute, an extraordinary contribution 
of fifty thousand pounds. In 1779, an equal sum 
was exacted. In 1780, the demand was renewed. 
Cheyte Sing, in the hope of obtaining some indul- 
gence, secretly offered the Governor-General a bribe 
of twenty thousand pounds. Hastings took the 
money, and his enemies have maintained that he 
took it intending to keep it. He certainly concealed 
the transaction, for a time, both from the Council in 
Bengal and from the Directors at home ; nor did he 
ever give any satisfactory reason for the conceal- 
ment. Public spirit, or the fear of detection, at last 
determined him to withstand the temptation. He 
paid over the bribe to the Company's treasury, and 
insisted that the Rajah should instantly comply with 
the demands of the Euolish Government. The 



104 WABREN HASTINGS. 

Rajah, after the fashion of his countrymen, shuffled, 
solicited, and pleaded poverty. The grasp of 
Hastinofs was not to be so eluded. He added to 
the requisition another ten thousand pounds as a fine 
for delay, and sent troops to exact the money. 

The money was paid. But this was not enougli. 
The late events in the south of India had increased 
the financial embarrassments of the Company. 
Hastings was determined to plunder Cheyte Sing, 
and, for that end, to fasten a quarrel on him. Ac- 
cordingly, the Rajah was now required to keep a 
body of cavalry for the service of the British 
Government. He objected and evaded. This was 
exactly what the Governor-General wanted. He 
had now a pretext for treating the wealthiest of his 
vassals as a criminal. " I resolved " (these are the 
words of Hastings himself) " to draw from his guilt 
the means of relief of the Company's distresses, to 
make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact a 
severe vengeance for past delinquency." The plan 
was simply this, to demand larger and larger con- 
tributions till the Rajah should be driven to remon- 
strate, then to call his remonstrance a crime, and to 
punish them by confiscating all his possessions. 

Cheyte Sing was in the greatest dismay. He 
offered two hundred thousand pounds to propitiate 
the British Government. But Hastings replied that 
nothing less than half a million would be accepted. 
Nay, he began to think of selling Benares to Oude, 
as he had formerly sold Allahabad and Rohilcund. 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 105 

The matter was one which could not be well man- 
aged at a distance ; and Hastings resolved to visit 
Benares. 

Cheyte Sing received his liege lord with every 
mark of reverence, came near sixty miles, with his 
guards, to meet and escort the illustrious visitor, 
and expressed his deep concern at the displeasure 
of the English. He even took off his turban, and 
laid it in the lap of Hastings, a gesture which in 
India marks the most profound submission and 
devotion. Hastings behaved with cold and repul- 
sive severity. Having arrived at Benares, he sent 
to the Rajah a paper containing the demands of 
the government of Bengal. The Rajah, in reply, 
attempted to clear himself from the accusations 
brought against him. Hastings, who wanted money 
and not excuses, was not to be put off by the 
ordinary artifices of Eastern negotiation. He in- 
stantly ordered the Rajah to be arrested and placed 
under the custody of two companies of sepoj^s. 

In taking these strong measures, Hastings scarcely 
showed his usual judgment. It is possible that, hav- 
ing had little opportunity of personally observing 
any part of the population of India, except the 
Bengalees, he was not fully aware of the difference 
between their character and that of the tribes which 
inhabit the upper provinces. He was now in a land 
far more favorable to the vigor of the human frame 
than the Delta of the Ganges ; in a land fruitful of 
soldiers, who have been found worthy to follow 



106 WAEBEN HASTINGS. 

English battalions to the charge and into the breach. 
The Rajah was popular among his subjects. His 
administration had been mild ; and the prosperity 
of the district which he governed presented a strik- 
ing contrast to the depressed state of Bahar under 
our rule, and a still more striking contrast to the 
misery of the provinces which were cursed by the 
tyranny of the Nabob Vizier. The national and 
religious prejudices with which the English were 
regarded throughout India were peculiarl}^ intense 
in the metropolis of the Brahminical superstition. 
It can therefore scarcely be doubted that the Gov- 
ernor-General, before he outraged the dignity of 
Cheyte Sing by an arrest, ought to have assembled 
a force capable of bearing down all opposition. 
This had not been done. The handful of sepoys 
who attended Hastings would probably have been 
sufficient to overawe Moorshedabad, or the Black 
Town of Calcutta. But they were unequal to a 
conflict with the hardy rabble of Benares. The 
streets surrounding the palace were filled by an im- 
mense multitude, of whom a large proportion, as is 
usual in Upper India, wore arms. The tumult be- 
came a fight, and the fight a massacre. The English 
oflficers defended themselves with desperate courage, 
against overwhelming numbers, and fell, as became 
them, sword in hand. The sepoys were butchered. 
The gates were forced. The captive prince, neg- 
lected by his gaolers during the confusion, discovered 
an outlet which opened on the precipitous bank of 



WAEEEN HASTINGS. 107 

the Ganges, let himself down to the water by a 
string made of the turbans of his attendants, found 
a boat, and escaped to the opposite shore. 

If Hastings had, by indiscreet violence, brought 
himself into a difficult and perilous situation, it is 
only just to acknowledge that he extricated himself 
with even more than his usual ability and presence 
of mind. He had only fifty men with him. The 
building in which he had taken up his residence was 
on every side blockaded by the insurgents. But his 
fortitude remained unshaken. The Rajah, from the 
other side of the river, sent apologies and liberal 
offers. They were not even answered. Some subtle 
and enterprising men were found who undertook to 
pass through the throng of enemies, and to convey 
the intelligence of the late events to the English 
cantonments. It is the fashion of the natives of 
India to wear large earrings of gold. When they 
travel, the rings are laid aside, lest the precious 
metal should tempt some gang of robbers ; and, in 
place of the ring, a quill or a roll of paper is inserted 
in the orifice to prevent it from closing. Hastings 
placed in the ears of his messengers letters rolled 
up in the smallest compass. Some of these letters 
were addressed to the commanders of the English 
troops. One was written to assure his wife of his 
safety. One was to the envoy whom he had sent to 
negotiate with the Mahrattas. Instructions for the 
negotiation were needed ; and the Governor-General 
framed them, in that situation of extreme danger, 



108 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

with as much composure as if he had been writing 
in his palace at Calcutta. 

Things, however, were not yet at the worst. An 
English officer of more spirit than judgment, eager 
to distinguish himself, made a premature attack on 
the insurgents beyond the river. His troops were 
entangled in narrow streets, and assailed by a furi- 
ous population. He fell, with many of his men; 
and the survivors were forced to retire. 

This event produced the effect which has never 
failed to follow every check, however slight, sus- 
tained in India by the English arms. For hun- 
dreds of miles round, the whole country was in 
commotion. The entire population of the district 
of Benares took arms. The fields were abandoned 
by the husbandmen, who thronged to defend their 
prince. The infection spread to Oude. The op- 
pressed people of that province rose up against the 
Nabob Vizier, refused to pay their imposts, and put 
the revenue officers to flight. Even Bahar was ripe 
for revolt. The hopes of Cheyte Sing began to rise. 
Instead of imploring mercy in the humble style of 
a vassal, he began to talk the language of a con- 
queror, and threatened, it was said, to sweep the 
white usurpers out of the land. But the English 
troops were now assembling fast. The officers, and 
even the private men, regarded the Governor-General 
with enthusiastic attachment, and flew to his aid 
with an alacrity which, as he boasted, had never 
been shown on any other occasion. Major Popham, 



WARREN HASTINGS. 109 

a brave and skilful soldier, who had highly distin- 
guished himself in the Mahratta war, and in whom 
the Governor-General reposed the greatest con- 
fidence, took the command. The tumultuary army 
of the Rajah was put to rout. His fastnesses were 
stormed. In a few hours above thirty thousand 
men left his standard and returned to their ordinary 
avocations. The unhappy prince fled from his 
country forever. His fair domain was added to 
the British dominions. One of his relations, indeed, 
was appointed Rajah ; but the Rajah of Benares 
was henceforth to be, like the Nabob of Bengal, a 
mere pensioner. 

By this revolution an addition of two hundred 
thousand pounds a year was made to the revenues 
of the Company. But the immediate relief was not 
as great as had been expected. The treasure laid 
up by Cheyte Sing had been popularly estimated at a 
million sterling. It turned out to be about a fourth 
part of that sum ; and, such as it was, it was seized 
by the army, and divided as prize-money. 

Disappointed in his expectations from Benares, 
Hastings was more violent than he would otherwise 
have been, in his dealings with Oude. Sujah Dowlah 
had long been dead. His son and successor, Asaph- 
ul-Dowlah, was one of the weakest and most vicious 
even of Eastern princes. His life was divided be- 
tween torpid repose and the most odious forms of 
sensuality. In his court there was boundless waste, 
throughout his dominions wretchedness and disorder. 



110 WARREN HASTINGS. 

He had been, under the skilful management of the 
English government, gradually sinking from the rank 
of an independent prince to that of a vassal of the 
Company. It was only by the help of a British 
brigade that he could be secure from the aggressions 
of neighbors who despised his weakness, and from 
the vengeance of subjects who detested his tyranny. 
A brigade was furnished ; and he engaged to defray 
the charge of paying and maintaining it. From 
that time his independence was at an end. Hastings 
was not a man to lose the advantage which he had 
thus gained. The Nabob soon began to complain 
of the burden which he had undertaken to bear. 
His revenues, he said, were falling off; his servants 
were unpaid ; he could no longer support the ex- 
pense of the arrangement which he had sanctioned. 
Hastings would nOt listen to these representations. 
The Vizier, he said, had invited the government of 
Bengal to send him troops, and had promised to 
pay for them. The troops had been sent. How 
long the troops were to remain in Oude was a matter 
not settled by the treaty. It remained, therefore, 
to be settled between the contracting parties. Bat 
the contracting parties differed. Who then must 
decide? The stronger. 

Hastings also argued that, if the English force 
was withdrawn, Oude would certainly become a prey 
to anarchy, and would probably be OA^errun by a 
Mahratta army. That the finances of Oude were 
embarrassed he admitted. But he contended, not 



WARREN HASTINGS. Ill 

without reason, that the embarrassment was to be 
attributed to the incapacity and vices of Asaph-ul- 
Dowlah himself, and that if less were spent on the 
troops, the only effect would be that more would be 
squandered on worthless favorites. 

Hastings had intended, after settling the affairs of 
Benares, to visit Lucknow, and there to confer with 
Asaph-ul-Dowlah. But the obsequious courtesy of 
the Nabob Vizier prevented this visit. With a small 
'train he hastened to meet the Governor-General. 
An interview took place in the fortress which, from 
the crest of the precipitous rock of Chunar, looks 
down on the waters of the Ganges. 

At first sight it might appear impossible that 
the negotiation should come to an amicable close. 
Hastings wanted an extraordinary supply of money. 
Asaph-ul-Dowlah wanted to obtain a remission of 
what he already owed. Such a difference seemed 
to admit of no compromise. There was, however, 
one course satisfactory to both sides, one course by 
which it was possible to relieve the finances both of 
Oude and of Bengal ; and that course was adopted. 
It was simply this, that the Governor-General and 
the Nabob Vizier should join to rob a third party ; 
and the third party whom they determined to rob 
was a parent of one of the robbers. 

The mother of the late Nabob and his wife, who 
was the mother of the present Nabob, were known 
as the Begums or Princesses of Oude. They had 
possessed great influence over' Sujah Dowlah, and 




WAEBEN HASTINGS. 



had, at his death, been left in possession of a 
splendid dotation. The domains of which they 
received the rents and administered the government 
were of wide extent. The treasure hoarded by the 
late Nabob, a treasure which was popularly estimated 
at near three millions sterling, was in their hands. 
They continued to occupy his favorite palace at 
Fyzabad, the Beautiful Dwelling ; while Asaph-ul- 
Dowlah held his court in the stately Lucknow, which 
he had built for himself on the shores of the Goomti, 
and had adorned with noble mosques and colleges. 

Asaph-ul-Dowlah had already extorted considera- 
ble sums from his mother. She had at length 
appealed to the ^English ; and the English had inter- 
fered. A solemn compact had been made, by 
which she qgnsented to give her son some pecuniary 
assistance, and he in his turn promised never to 
commit any further invasion of her rights. This 
compact was formally guaranteed by the government 
of Bengal. But times had changed ; money was 
wanted ; and the power which had given the guar- 
antee was not ashamed to instigate the spoiler to 
excesses such that even he shrank from them. 

It was necessary to find some pretext for a confis- 
cation inconsistent, not merely with plighted faith, 
not merely with the ordinary rules of humanity and 
justice, but also with that great law of filial piety 
which, even in the wildest tribes of savages, even in 
those more deg-raded communities which wither under 
the influence of a corrupt half-civilization, retains a 



JVARREN HASTINGS. 113 

certain authority over the human mind. A pretext 
was the last thing that Hastings was likely to want. 
The insurrection at Benares had produced disturb- 
ances in Oude. These disturbances it was convenient 
to impute to the Princesses. Evidence for the 
imputation there was scarcely any ; unless reports 
wandering from one mouth to another, and gaining 
something by every transmission, may be called evi- 
dence. The accused were furnished with no charge ; 
they were permitted to make no defence ; for the Gov- 
ernor-General wisely considered that, if he tried them, 
he might not be able to find a ground for plundering 
them. It was agreed between him and the Nabob 
Vizier that the noble ladies should, by a sweeping 
act of confiscation, be stripped of their domains and 
treasures for the benefit of the Company, and that 
the sums thus obtained should be accepted by the 
government of Bengal in satisfaction of its claims on 
the government of Oude. 

While Asaph-ul-Dowlah was at Chunar, he was 
completely subjugated by the clear and commanding 
intellect of the English statesman. But, when they 
had separated, the Vizier began to reflect with un- 
easiness on the engagements into which he had en- 
tered. His mother and grandmother protested and 
implored. His heart, deeply corrupted by absolute 
power and licentious pleasures, yet not naturally 
unfeeling, failed him in this crisis. Even the 
English resident at Lucknow, though hitherto devoted 
to Hastings, shrank from extreme measures. But 



114 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

the Governor-General was inexorable. He wrote to 
the resident in terms of the greatest severity, and 
declared that, if the spoliation which had been agreed 
upon were not instantly carried into effect, he would 
himself go to Lucknow, and do that from which 
feebler minds recoiled with dismay. The resident, 
thus menaced, waited on his Highness and insisted 
that the treaty of Chunar should be carried into full 
and immediate effect. Asaph-ul-Dowlah yielded, 
making at the same time a solemn protestation that 
he yielded to compulsion. The lands were resumed ; 
but the treasure was not so easily obtained. It was 
necessary to use violence. A body of the Company's 
troops marched to Fyzabad, and forced the gates of 
the palace. The Princesses were confined to their 
own apartments. But still they refused to submit. 
Some more stringent mode of coercion was to be 
found. A mode was found of which, even at this 
distance of time, we cannot speak without shame and 
sorrow. 

There were at Fyzabad two ancient men, belonging 
to that unhappy class which a practice, of immemorial 
antiquity in the East, has excluded from the pleasures 
of love and from the hope of posterity. It has 
always been held in Asiatic courts that beings thus 
estranged from sympathy with their kind are those 
whom princes may most safely trust. Sujah Dowlah 
had been of this opinion. He had given his entire 
confidence to the two eunuchs ; and after his death 
they remained at the head of the household of his 
widow. 



WARREN HASTINGS. 115 

These men were, by the orders of the British gov- 
ernment, seized, imprisoned, ironed, starved ahnost 
to death, in order to extort money from the Princesses. 
After they had been two months in confinement, their 
health gave way. They implored permission to take 
a little exercise in the garden of their prison. The 
officer who was in charge of them stated that, if they 
were allowed this indulgence, there was not the 
smallest chance of their escaping, and that their 
irons really added nothing to the security of the 
custody in which they were kept. He did not under- 
stand the plan of his superiors. Their object in 
these inflictions was not security but torture ; and all 
mitigation was refused. Yet this was not the worst. 
It was resolved by an English government that these 
two infirm old men should be delivered to the tor- 
mentors. For that purpose they removed to Luck- 
now. What horrors their dungeon there witnessed 
can only be guessed. But there remains on the 
records of Parliament this letter, written by a British 
resident to a British soldier. 

" Sir, the Nabob having determined to inflict cor- 
poral punishment upon the prisoners under your 
guard, this is to desire that his officers, when they 
shall come, may have free access to the prisoners, 
and be permitted to do with them as they shall see 
proper." 

While these barbarities were perpetrated at 
Lucknow, the Princesses were still under duress at 
Fyzabad. Food was allowed to enter their apart- 



116 WARREN HASTINGS. 

ments only in such scanty quantities that their female 
attendants were in danger of perishing with hunger. 
Month after month this cruelty continued, till at 
length, after twelve hundred thousand pounds had 
been wrung out of the Princesses, Hastings began 
to think that he had really got to the bottom of their 
coffers, and that no rigor could extort more. Then 
at length the wretched men who were detained at 
Lucknow regained their liberty. When their irons 
were knocked off, and the doors of their prison 
opened, their quivering lips, the tears which ran 
down their cheeks, and the thanksgivings which they 
poured forth to the common Father of Mussulmans 
and Christians, melted even the stout hearts of the 
English warriors who stood by. 

But we must not forget to do justice to Sir Elijah 
Impey's conduct on this occasion. It was not indeed 
easy for him to intrude himself into a business so 
entirely alien from all his official duties. But there 
was something inexpressibly alluring, we must sup- 
pose, in the peculiar rankness of the infamy which 
was then to be got at Lucknow. He hurried thither 
as fast as relays of palanquin-bearers could carry 
him. A crowd of people came before him with 
affidavits against the Begums, ready drawn in their 
hands. Those affidavits he did not read. Some of 
them, indeed, he could not read ; for they were in 
the dialects of Northern India, and no interpreter 
was employed. He administered the oath to the 
deponents with all possible expedition, and asked 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 117 

not a single question, not even whether they had 
perused the statements to which they swore. This 
work performed, he got again into his palanquin, 
and posted back to Calcutta, to be in time for the 
opening of term. The cause was one which, by his 
own confession, lay altogether out of his jurisdiction. 
Under the charter of justice, he had no more right 
to inquire into crimes committed by Asiatics in Oude 
than the Lord President of the Court of Session of 
Scotland to hold an assize at Exeter. He had no 
right to try the Begums, nor did he pretend to try 
them. With what object, then, did he undertake 
so long a journey ? Evidently in order that he might 
give, in an irregular manner, that sanction which in 
a regular manner he could not give, to the crimes of 
those who had recently hired him ; and in order that 
a confused mass of testimony which he did not sift, 
which he did not even read, might acquire an author- 
ity not properly belonging to it, from the signature 
of the highest judicial functionary in India. 

The time was approaching, however, when he was 
to be stripped of that robe which has never, since 
the ^Revolution, been disgraced so foully as by him. 
The state of India had for some time occupied 
much of the attention of the British Parliament. 
Towards the close of the American war, two com- 
mittees of the Commons sat on Eastern affairs. In 
one Edmund Burke took the lead. The other was 
under the presidency of the able and versatile Henry 
Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland. Great 



118 WABREN HASTINGS. 

as are the changes which, durmg the last sixty years, 
have taken place in our Asiatic dominions, the re- 
ports which those committees laid on the table of 
the House will still be found most interesting and 
instructive. 

There was as yet no connection between the Com- 
pany and either of the great parties in the state. 
The ministers had no motive to defend Indian 
abuses. On the contrary, it was for their interest 
to show, if possible, that the government and patron- 
age of our Oriental empire might, with advantage, 
be transferred to themselves. The votes, therefore, 
which, in consequence of the reports made by the 
two committees, were passed by the Commons, 
breathed the spirit of stern and indignant justice. 
The severest epithets were applied to several of the 
measures of Hastings, especially to the Rohilla war ; 
and it was resolved, on the motion of Mr. Dundas, 
that the Company ought to recall a Governor-General 
who had brought such calamities on the Indian 
people, and such dishonor on the British name. An 
act was passed for limiting the jurisdiction of the 
Supreme Court. The bargain which Hastings had 
made with the Chief Justice was condemned in the 
strongest terms ; and an address was presented to 
the king, praying that Impey might be summoned 
home to answer for his misdeeds. 

Impey was recalled by a letter from the Secretary 
of State. But the proprietors of India stock reso- 
lutely refused to dismiss Hastings from their service, 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 119 

and passed a resolution affirming, what was undeni- 
ably true, that they were intrusted by law with the 
right of naming and removing their Governor- 
General, and that they were not bound to obey the 
directions of a single branch of the legislature with 
respect to such nomination or removal. 

Thus supported by his employers, Hastings re- 
mained at the head of the government of Bengal till 
the spring of 1785. His administration, so eventful 
and stormy, closed in almost perfect quiet. In the 
Council there was no regular opposition to his 
measures. Peace was restored to India. The Mah- 
ratta war had ceased. Hyder was no more. A 
treaty had been concluded with his son, Tippoo ; and 
the Carnatic had been evacuated by the armies of 
Mysore. Since the termination of the American 
war, England had no European enemy or rival in 
the Eastern seas. 

On a general review of the long administration of 
Hastings, it is impossible to deny that, against the 
great crimes by which it is blemished, we have to 
set off great public services. England had passed 
through a perilous crisis. She still, indeed, main- 
tained her place in the foremost rank of European 
powers ; and the manner in which she had defended 
herself against fearful odds had inspired surround- 
ing nations with a high opinion both of her spirit 
and of her strength. Nevertheless, in every part 
of the world, except one, she had been a loser. 
Not only had she been compelled to acknowledge 



120 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

the independence of thirteen colonies peopled by 
her children, and to conciliate the Irish by giving 
up the right of legislating for them ; but, in the 
Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico, on the coast 
of Africa, on the continent of America, she had 
been compelled to cede the fruits of her victories in 
former wars. Spain regained Minorca and Florida ; 
France regained Senegal, Goree, and several West 
Indian Islands. The only quarter of the world in 
which Britain had lost nothing was the quarter in 
which her interests had been committed to the care 
of Hastings. In spite of the utmost exertions both 
of European and Asiatic enemies, the power of our 
country in the East had been greatly augmented. 
Benares was subjected ; the Nabob Vizier reduced 
to vassalage. That our influence had been thus 
extended, nay, that Fort William and Fort St. 
George had not been occupied by hostile armies was 
owing, if we may trust the general voice of the 
English in India, to the skill and resolution of 
Hastings. 

His internal administration, with all its blemishes, 
gives him a title to be considered as one of the 
most remarkable men in our history. He dis- 
solved the double government. He transferred the 
direction of affairs to Eno-lish hands. Out of a frio;ht- 
ful anarchy he educed at least a rude and imperfect 
order. The whole organization by which justice 
was dispensed, revenue collected, peace maintained 
throughout a territory not inferior in population to 



WARREN HASTINGS, 121 

the dominions of Lewis the Sixteenth or the Em- 
peror Joseph, was formed and superintended by 
him. He boasted that every public office, without 
exception, whicli existed wlien he left Bengal, was 
his creation. It is quite true that this system, after 
all the improvements suggested by the experience 
of sixty years, still needs improvement, and that it 
was at first far more defective than it now is. But 
whoever seriously considers what it is to construct 
from the beolnnins; the whole of a machine so vast 
and complex as a government, will allow that what 
Hastino;s effected deserves hia^h admiration. To 
compare the most celebrated European ministers to 
him seems to us as unjust as it would be to compare 
the best baker in London with Robinson Crusoe, 
who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to 
make his plough and his harrow, his fences and his 
scarecrows, his sickle and his flail, his mill and 
his oven. 

The just fame of Hastings rises still higher when 
we reflect that he was not bred a statesman ; that 
he was sent from school to a counting-house ; and 
that he was employed during the prime of his man- 
hood as a commercial agent, far from all intellectual 
society. - 

Nor must we forget that all, or almost all, to 
whom, when placed at the head of affairs, he could 
apply for assistance, were persons who owed as 
little as himself, or less than himself, to education. 
A minister in Europe finds himself, on the first day 



122 WARREN HASTINGS, 

on which he commences his functions, surrounded 
by experienced public servants, the depositaries of 
official traditions. Hastings had no such help. 
His own reflection, his own energy, were to supply 
the place of all Downing Street and Somerset 
House. Having had no facilities for learning, he 
was forced to teach. He had first to form him- 
self, and then to form his instruments ; and this 
not in a single department, but in all the depart- 
ments of the administration. 

It must be added that, while engaged in this 
most arduous task, he was constantly trammelled 
by orders from home, and frequently borne down by 
a majority in council. The preservation of an em- 
pire from a formidable combination of foreign ene- 
mies, the construction of a government in all its 
parts, were accomplished by him, while every ship 
brought out bales of censure from his employers, 
and while the records of every consultation were 
filled with acrimonious minutes by his colleagues. 
We believe that there never was a public man whose 
temper was so severely tried ; not Marlborough, 
when thwarted by the Dutch Deputies ; not Wel- 
lington, when he had to deal at once with the 
Portuguese Regency, the Spanish Juntas, and Mr. 
Perceval. But the temper of Hastings was equal 
to almost any trial. It was not sweet ; but it was 
calm. Quick and vigorous as his intellect was, the 
patience with which he endured the most cruel 
vexations till a remedy could be found, resembled 



WARREN HASTINGS. 123 

the patience of stupidity. He seems to have been 
capable of resentment, bitter, and long-enduring ; 
yet his resentment so seldom hurried him into 
any blunder, that it may be doubted whether what 
appeared to be revenge was anything but policy. 

The effect of this singular equanimit}^ was that 
he always had the full command of all of the re- 
sources of one of the most fertile minds that ever 
existed. Accordingly, no complication of perils and 
embarrassments could perplex him. For every diffi- 
culty he had a contrivance ready ; and, whatever 
may be thought of the justice and humanity of 
some of his contrivances, it is certain that they 
seldom failed to serve the purpose for which they 
were designed. 

Together with this extraordinary talent for devising 
expedients, Hastings possessed, in a very high degree, 
another talent scarcely less necessary to a man in his 
situation ; we mean the talent for conducting political 
controversy. It is as necessary to an English states- 
man in the East that he should be able to write, as it 
is to a minister in this country that he should be able 
to speak. It is chiefly by the oratory of a public 
man here that the nation judges of his powers. It 
is from the letters and reports of a public man in 
India that the dispensers of patronage form their 
estimate of him. In each case, the talent which 
receives peculiar encouragement is developed, per- 
haps at the expense of the other powers. In this 
country we sometimes hear men speak above their 



124 WABEEN BASTINGS. 

abilities. It is not very unusual to find gentlemen 
in the Indian service who write above their abilities. 
The English politician is a little too much of a 
debater ; the Indian politician a little too much of an 
essayist. 

Of the numerous servants of the Company who 
have distinguished themselves as framers of minutes 
and despatches, Hastings stands at the head. He 
was indeed the person who gave to the official writing 
of the Indian governments the character which it 
still retains. He was matched ao;aiust no common 
antagonist. But even Francis was forced to ac- 
knowledge, with sullen and resentful candor, that 
there was no contending against the pen of Hastings. 
And, in truth, the Governor-General's power of 
making out a case, of perplexing what it was incon- 
venient that people should understand, and of setting 
in the clearest point of view whatever would bear the 
light, was incomparable. His style must be praised 
with some reservation. It was in general forcible, 
pure, and polished ; but it was sometimes, though 
not often, turgid, and, on one or two occasions, even 
bombastic. Perhaps the fondness of Hastings for 
Persian literature ma}' have tended to corrupt his 
taste. 

And, since we have referred to his literary tastes, 
it would be most unjust not to praise the judicious 
encouragement, which, as a ruler, he gave to liberal 
studies and curious researches. His patronage was 
extended, with prudent generosity, to voyages, 



WARREN HASTINGS. 125 

travels, experiments, publications. He did little, it 
is true, towards introducing into India the learning 
of the West. To make the young natives of Bengal 
familiar with Milton and Adam Smith, to substitute 
the geography, astronomy, and surgery of Europe 
for the dotages of the Brahminical superstition, or for 
the imperfect science of ancient Greece transfused 
through Arabian expositions, this was a scheme 
reserved to crown the beneficent administration of a 
far more virtuous ruler. Still it is impossible to 
refuse high commendation to a man who, taken from 
a ledger to govern an empire, overwhelmed by public 
business, surrounded by people as busy as himself, 
and separated by thousands of leagues from almost 
all literary society, gave, both by his example and by 
his munificence, a great impulse to learning. In 
Persian and Arabic literature he was deeply skilled. 
With the Sanscrit he was not himself acquainted ; 
but those who first brousfht that lang-uao-e to the 
knowledge of European students owed much to his 
encouragement. It was under his protection that the 
Asiatic Society commenced its honorable career. 
That distinguished body selected him to be its first 
president ; but, with excellent taste and feeling, he 
declined the honor in favor of Sir William Jones. 
But the chief advantage which the students of Orien- 
tal letters derived from his patronage remains to be 
mentioned. The Pundits of Bengal had always 
looked with great jealousy on the attempts of for- 
eigners to pry mto those mysteries which were locked 



126 WABRElSf HASTINGS. 

up in the sacred dialect. The Brahmin ical religion 
had been persecuted by the Mahommedans. What 
the Hindoos knew of the spirit of the Portuguese 
government might warrant them in apprehending 
persecution from Christians. That apprehension, 
the wisdom and moderation of Hastings removed. 
He was the first foreign ruler who succeeded in gain- 
ing the confidence of the hereditary priests of India, 
and who induced them to lay open to English 
scholars the secrets of the old Brahminical theology 
and jurisprudence. 

It is indeed impossible to deny that, in the great 
art of inspiring large masses of human beings with 
confidence and attachment, no ruler ever surpassed 
Hastings. If he had made himself popular with the 
English by giving up the Bengalees to extortion and 
oppression, or if, on the other hand, he had concili- 
ated the Bengalees and alienated the English, there 
would have been no cause for wonder. What is 
peculiar to him is that, being the chief of a small 
band of strangers, who exercised boundless power 
over a great indigenous population, he made himself 
beloved both by the subject many and by the dom- 
inant few. The affection felt for him by the civil 
service was singularly ardent and constant. Through 
all his disasters and perils, his brethren stood by 
him with steadfast loyalty. The army, at the same 
time, loved him as armies have seldom loved any but 
the greatest chiefs who have led them to victory. 
Even in his disputes with distinguished military men, 



WABREN HASTINGS. 127 

he could always count on the support of the military 
profession. While such was his empire over the 
hearts of his countrymen, he enjoyed among the 
natives a popularity such as other governors have 
perhaps better merited, but such as no other gov- 
ernor has been able to attain. He spoke their ver- 
nacular dialects with facility and precision. He was 
intimately acquainted with their feelings and usages. 
On one or two occasions, for great ends, he deliber- 
ately acted in defiance of their opinion ; but on such 
occasions he gained more in their respect than he 
lost in their love. In general, he carefully avoided 
all that could shock their national or religious preju- 
dices. His administration was indeed in many 
respects faulty ; but the Bengalee standard of good 
government was not high. Under the Nabobs, the 
hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had passed annually 
over the rich alluvial plain. But even the Mahratta 
shrank from a conflict with the mighty children of 
the sea ; and the immense rice harvests of the Lower 
Ganges were safely gathered in, under the protection 
of the English sword. The first English conquerors 
had been more rapacious and merciless even than 
the Mahrattas ; but that generation had passed away. 
Defective as was the police, heavy as were the public 
burdens, it is probable that the oldest man in Bengal 
could not recollect a season of equal security and 
prosperity. For the first time within living memory, 
the province was placed under a government strong 
enough to prevent others from robbing, and not in- 



128 WARREN HASTINGS. 

clined to play the robber itself. These things inspired 
good-will. At the same time the constant success 
of Hastings, and the manner in which he extricated 
himself from every difficulty, made hhn an object of 
superstitious admiration ; and the more than regal 
splendor which he sometimes displayed dazzled a 
people who have much in common with children. 
Even now, after the lapse of more than fifty years, 
the natives of India still talk of him as the greatest 
of the English ; and nurses sing children to sleep 
with a jingling ballad about the fleet horses and richly 
caparisoned elephants of Sahib Warren Hostein. 

The gravest offence of which Hastings was guilty 
did not affect his popularity with the people of 
Bengal ; for those offences were committed against 
neighboring states. Those offences, as our readers 
must have perceived, we are not disposed to vindicate ; 
yet, in order that the censure may be justly appor- 
tioned to the transgression, it is fit that the motive of 
the criminal should be taken into consideration. The 
motive which prompted the worst acts of Hastings 
was misdirected and ill-regulated public spirit. The 
rules of justice, the sentiments of humanity, the 
plighted faith of treaties, were in his view as nothing, 
when opposed to the immediate interest of the state. 
This is no justification, according to the principles 
either of morality, or of what we believe to be identical 
with morality, namely, far-sighted policy. ^ Never- 
theless, the common sense of mankind, which in 
questions of this sort seldom goes far wrong, will 



WARREN HASTINGS. 129 

always recognize a distinction between crimes which 
originate in an inordinate zeal for the commonwealth, 
and crimes which originate in selfish cupidity. To 
the benefit of this distinction Hastings is fairly 
entitled. There is, we conceive, no reason to suspects 
that the Rohilla war, the revolution of Benares, ot 
the spoliation of the Princesses of Oude, added a 
rupee to his fortune. We will not affirm that, in all 
pecuniary dealings, he showed that punctilious in- 
tegrity, that dread of the faintest appearance of evil, 
which is now the glorj^ of the Indian civil service. 
But when the school in which he had been trained, and 
the temptations to which he was exposed, are con- 
sidered, we are more inclined to praise him for his 
general uprightness with respect to money, than 
rigidly to blame him for a few transactions which 
would now be called indelicate and irregular, but 
which even now would hardly be designated as 
corrupt. A rapacious man he certainly was not. 
Had he been so, he would infallibly have returned to 
his country the richest subject in Europe. We speak 
within compass, when we say that, without applying 
any extraordinary pressure, he might easily have 
obtained from the zemindars of the Company's prov- 
inces and from neighboring princes, in the course of 
thirteen years, more than three millions sterling, and 
might have outshone the splendor of Carlton House 
and of the Palais Royal. He brought home a 
fortune such as a Governor-General, fond of state, 
and careless of thrift, might easily, during so long a 



130 WARREN HASTINGS. 

tenure of office, save out of his legal salary. Mrs. 
Hastings, we are afraid, was less scrupulous. It 
was generally believed that she accepted presents 
with great alacrity, and that she thus formed, with- 
out the connivance of her husband, a private hoard 
amounting to several lacs of rupees. We are the 
more inclined to give credit to this story, because 
Mr. Gleig, who cannot but have heard it, does not, 
so far as we have observed, notice or contradict it. 

The influence of Mrs. Hastings over her husband 
was indeed such that she might easily have obtained 
much larger sums than she was ever accused of re- 
ceiving. At length her health began to give way ; 
and the Governor-General, much against his will, 
was compelled to send her to England. He seems 
to have loved her with that love which is peculiar to 
men of strong minds, to men whose affection is not 
easily won or widely diffused. The talk of Calcutta 
ran for some time on the luxurious manner in which 
he fitted up the round-house of an Indiaman for her 
accommodation, on the profusion of sandal- wood and 
carved ivory which adorned her cabin, and on the 
thousands of rupees which had been expended in 
order to procure for her the society of an agreeable 
female companion during the voyage. We may 
remark here that the letters of Hastings to his wife 
are exceedingly characteristic. They are tender, and 
full of indications of esteem and confidence ; but, at 
the same time, a little more ceremonious than is 
usual in so intimate a relation. The solemn courtesy 



WARREN HASTINGS. 131 

with which he compliments " his elegant Marian '* 
reminds us now and then of the dignified air with 
which Sir Charles Grandison bowed over Miss 
Byron's hand in the cedar parlor. 

iVfter some months, Hastings prepared to follow 
his wife to England. "When it was announced that 
he was about to quit his office, the feeling of the 
society which he had so long governed manifested 
itself by many signs. Addresses poured in from 
Europeans and Asiatics, from civil functionaries, 
soldiers, and traders. On the day on which he de- 
livered up the keys of office, a crowd of friends and 
admirers formed a lane to the quay where he em- 
barked. Several bar2;es escorted him far down the 
river ; and some attached friends refused to quit 
him till the low coast of Beng alwas fading from the 
view, and till the pilot was leaving the ship. 

Of his voyage little is known, except that he 
amused himself with books and with his pen ; and 
that, among the compositions by which he beguiled 
the tediousness of that long leisure, was a pleasing 
imitation of Horace's Otium Divos rogat. This 
little poem was inscribed to Mr. Shore, afterwards 
Lord Teignmouth, a man of whose integrity, hu- 
manity, and honor, it is impossible to speak too 
highly, but who, like some other excellent members 
of the civil service, extended to the conduct of his 
friend Hastings an indul2:ence of which his own 
conduct never stood in need. 

The voyage was, for those times, very speedy. 



132 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

Hastings was little more than four months on the 
sea. In June, 1785, he landed at Plymouth, 
posted to London, appeared at Court, paid his re- 
spects in Leadenhall Street, and then retired with 
his wife to Cheltenham. 

He was greatly pleased with his reception. The 
King treated him with marked distinction. The 
Queen, who had already incurred much censure on 
account of the favor which, in spite of the ordinary 
severity of her virtue, she had shown to the "ele- 
gant Marian," was not less gracious to Hastings. 
The Directors received him in a solemn sitting ; 
and their chairman read to him a vote of thanks 
which they had passed without one dissentient voice. 
"I find myself," said Hastings, in a letter written 
about a quarter of a year after his arrival in Eng- 
land, "I find myself everywhere, and universally, 
treated with evidences, apparent even to my own 
observation, that I possess the good opinion of my 
country." 

The confident and exulting tone of his correspond- 
ence about this time is the more remarkable, be- 
cause he had already received ample notice of the 
attack which was in preparation. Within a week 
after he landed at Plymouth, Burke gave notice in 
the House of Commons of a motion seriously affect- 
ing a gentleman lately returned from India. The 
session, however, was then so far advanced, that it 
was impossible to enter on so extensive and impor- 
tant a subject. 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 133 

Hastings, it is clear, was not sensible of the dan- 
ger of his position. Indeed that sagacity, that 
judgment, that readiness in devising expedients^ 
which had distinguished him in tlie East, seemed 
now to have forsaken liim ; not that his abilities 
were at all impaired ; not that he was not still the 
same man who had triumphed over Francis and 
Nuncomar, who had made the Chief Justice and the 
Nabob Vizier his tools, who had deposed Cheyte 
Sing, and repelled Hyder Ali. But an oak, as Mr. 
Grattan finely said, should not be transplanted at 
fifty. A man who, having left England when a 
boy, returns to it after thirty or forty years passed 
in India, will find, be his talents what they may, 
that he has much both to learn and to unlearn be- 
fore he can take a place among English statesmen. 
The working of a representative system, the war of 
parties, the arts of debate, the influence of the 
press, are startling novelties to him. Surrounded 
on every side by new machines and new tactics, he 
is as much bewildered as Hannibal would have been 
at Waterloo, or Themistocles at Trafalgar. His 
very acuteness deludes him. His very vigor causes 
him to stumble. The more correct his maxims, 
when applied to the state of society to which he is 
accustomed, the more certain they are to lead him 
astray. This was strikingly the case with Hastings. 
In India he had a bad hand ; but he was master of 
the game, and he won every stake. In England he 
held excellent cards, if he had known how to play 



13^ WABREN HASTINGS. 

them ; and it was chiefly by his own errors that he 
was brought to the verge of ruin. 

Of all his errors the most serious was perhaps the 
choice of a champion. Clive, in similar circum- 
stances, had made a singularly happy selection. He 
put himself into the hands of Wedderburn, afterwards 
Lord Loughborough, one of the few great advocates 
who have also been great in the House of Commons. 
To the defence of Clive, therefore, nothing was 
wanting, neither learning nor knowledge of the 
world, neither forensic acuteness nor that eloquence 
which charms political assemblies. Hastings in- 
trusted his interests to a very different person, a 
Major in the Bengal army, named Scott. This gen- 
tleman had been sent over from India some time 
before as the agent of the Governor-General. It 
was rumored that his services were rewarded with 
Oriental munificence ; and we believe that he re- 
ceived much more than Hastings could conveniently 
spare. The Major obtained a seat in Parliament, 
and was there res^arded as the ors^an of his em- 
ployer. It was evidentl}^ impossible that a gentle- 
man so situated could speak with the authority 
which belongs to an independent position. Nor 
had the agent of Hastings the talents necessary for 
obtaining the ear of an assembly which, accustomed 
to listen to great orators, had naturally become fas- 
tidious. He was always on his legs ; he was very 
tedious ; and he had only one topic, the merits and 
wrongs of Hastings. Everybody who knows the 



WARREN HASTINGS. 135 

House of Commons will easily guess what followed. 
The Major was soon considered as the greatest bore 
of his time. His exertions were not confined to 
Parliament. There was hardly a day on which the 
newspapers did not contain some puff upon Hast- 
ings, signed AsiaUc2is or Bengalensis^ but known to 
be written by the indefatigable Scott ; and hardly a 
month in which some bulky pamphlet on the same 
subject, and from the same pen, did not pass to the 
trunk-makers and the pastry-cooks. As to this 
gentleman's capacity for conducting a delicate ques- 
tion through Parliament, our readers will want no 
evidence beyond that which they will find in letters 
preserved in these volumes. We will give a single 
specimen of his temper and judgment. He desig- 
nated the greatest man then living as *' that reptile, 
|Mr. Burke.'* 

In spite, however, of this unfortunate choice, the 
general aspect of affau's was favorable to Hastings. 
The King was on his side. The Company and its 
servants were zealous in his cause. Among public 
men he had many ardent friends. Such were Lord 
Mansfield, who had outlived the vigor of his body, 
but not that of his mind ; and Lord Lansdowne, 
who, though unconnected with any party, retained 
the importance which belongs to great talents and 
knowledge. The ministers were generally believed 
to be favorable to the late Governor-General. 
They owed their power to the clamor which had 
been raised against Mr. Fox's East India Bill. 



136 WARBEN HASTINGS. 

The authors of that bill, when accused of invading 
vested rights, and of setting up powers unknown to 
the constitution, had defended themselves by point- 
ing to the crimes of Hastings, and by arguing that 
abuses so extraordinary justified extraordinary 
measures. Those who, by opposing that bill, had 
raised themselves to the head of affairs, would nat- 
urally be inclined to extenuate the evils which had 
been made the plea for administering so violent a 
remedy ; and such, in fact, was their general dispo- 
sition. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow, in particu- 
lar, whose great place and force of intellect gave 
him a weight in the government inferior only to that 
of Mr. Pitt, espoused the cause of Hastings with 
indecorous violence. Mr. Pitt, though he had cen- 
sured many parts of the Indian system, had studi- 
ously abstained from saying a word against the late 
chief of the Indian government. To Major Scott, 
indeed, the young minister had in private extolled 
Hastings as a great, a wonderful man, who had the 
highest claims on the government. There was only 
one objection to granting all that so eminent a ser- 
vant of the public could ask. The resolution of 
censure still remained on the journals of the House 
of Commons. That resolution was, indeed, unjust ; 
but till it was rescinded, could the minister advise 
the King to bestow any mark of approbation on the 
person censured ? If Major Scott is to be trusted, 
Mr. Pitt declared that this was the only reason 
which prevented the advisers of the Crown from 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 137 

conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General. 
Mr. Dundas was the only important member of the 
administration who was deeply committed to a dif- 
ferent view of the subject. He had moved the 
resolution which created the difficulty ; but even 
from him little was to be apprehended. Since he 
had presided over the committee on Eastern affairs, 
great changes had taken place. He was sur- 
rounded by new allies ; he had fixed his hopes on 
new objects ; and whatever may have been his good 
qualities (and he had many), flattery itself never 
reckoned rigid consistency in the number. 

From the Ministry, therefore, Hastings had every 
reason to expect support ; and the Ministry was 
very powerful. The Opposition was loud and vehe- 
ment against him. But the Opposition, though for- 
midable from the wealth and influence of some of 
its members, and from the admirable talents and 
eloquence of others, was outnumbered in Parlia- 
ment, and odious throughout the country. Nor, as 
far as we can judge, was the Opposition generally 
desirous to engage in so serious an undertaking as 
the impeachment of an Indian Governor. Such an 
impeachment must last for years. It must impose 
on the chiefs of the party an immense load of labor. 
Yet it could scarcely, in any manner, affect the 
event of the great political game. The followers of 
the coalition were therefore more inclined to revile 
Hastings than to prosecute him. They lost no op- 
portunity of coupling his name with the names of the 



138 WARREN EASTINGS. 

most hateful tyrants of whom history makes mention. 
The wits of Brooks's aimed their keenest sarcasms 
both at his public and at his domestic life. Some 
fine diamonds which he had presented, as it was 
rumored, to the royal family, and a certain richly 
carved iron bed which the Queen had done him the 
honor to accept from him, were favorite subjects of 
ridicule. One lively poet proposed, that the great 
acts of the fair Marian's present husband should be 
immortalized by the pencil of his predecessor ; and 
that Imhoff should be employed to embellish the 
House of Commons with paintings of the bleeding 
Rohillas, of Nuncomar swinging, of Cheyte Sing 
letting himself down to the Ganges. Another, in 
an exquisitely humorous parody of Virgil's third 
eclogue, propounded the question, what that min- 
eral could be of which the rays had power to make 
the most austere of princesses the friend of a wan- 
ton. A third described, with gay malevolence, the 
gorgeous appearance of Mrs. Hastings at St. 
James's, the galaxy of jewels, torn from Indian 
Begums, which adorned her head-dress, her neck- 
lace gleaming with future votes, and the depending 
questions that shone upon her ears. Satirical at- 
tacks of this description, and perhaps a motion for 
a vote of censure, would have satisfied the great 
body of the Opposition. But there were two men 
whose indignation was not to be so appeased, 
Philip Francis and Edmund Burke. 

Francis had recently entered the House of Com- 



WARREN HASTINGS, 139 

mons, and had already established a character there 
for industry and ability. He labored indeed under 
one most unfortunate defect, want of fluency. But 
he occasionally expressed himself with a dignity and 
energy worthy of the greatest orators. Before he 
had been many days in Parliament, he incurred the 
bitter dislike of Pitt, who constantly treated him with 
as much asperity as the laws of debate would allow. 
Neither lapse of years nor change of scene had miti- 
gated the enmities which Francis had brought back 
from the East. After his usual fashion, he mistook 
his malevolence for virtue, nursed it, as preachers 
tell us that we ought to nurse our good dispositions, 
and paraded it on all occasions, with Pharisaical 
ostentation. 

The zeal of Burke was still fiercer ; but it was far 
purer. Men unable to understand the elevation of 
his mind have tried to find out some discreditable 
motive for the vehemence and pertinacity which he 
showed on this occasion. But they have altogether 
failed. The idle story that he had some private 
slight to revenge, has long been given up, even by 
the advocates of Hastings. Mr. Gleig supposes that 
Burke was actuated by party spirit : that he retained 
a bitter remembrance of the fall of the coalition, that 
he attributed that fall to the exertions of the East 
India interest, and that he considered Hastings as 
the head and the representative of that intereM. 
This explanation seems to be suflSciently refuted by 
a reference to dates. The hostility of Burke to 



140 W ABB EN HASTINGS. 

Hastings commenced long before the coalition ; and 
lasted long after Burke had become a strenuous 
supporter of tliose by whom the coalition had been 
defeated. It began when Burke and Fox, closely 
allied together, were attacking the influence of the 
Crown, and calling for peace with the American 
republic. It continued till Burke, alienated from 
Fox, and loaded with the favors of the Crown, died 
preaching a crusade against the French republic. 
We surely cannot attribute to the events of 1784 an 
enmity whjch began in 1781, and which retained 
undiminished force long after persons far more deeply 
implicated than Hastings in the events of 1784 had 
been cordially forgiven. And why should we look 
for any other explanation of Burke's conduct than 
that which we find on the surface ? The plain truth 
is that Hastings had committed some great crimes, 
and that the thought of those crimes made the blood 
of Burke boil in his veins. For Burke was a man in 
whom compassion for suffering, and hatred of in- 
justice and tyranny, were as strong as in Las Casas 
or Clarkson. And although in him, as in Las Casas 
and in Clarkson, these noble feelings were alloyed 
with the infirmity which belongs to human nature, 
he is, like them, entitled to this great praise, that he 
devoted years of intense labor to the service of a 
people with whom he had neither blood nor language, 
neither religion nor manners in common, and from 
whom no requital, no thanks, no applause could be 
expected. 



WARREN HASTINGS. . 141 

His knowledge of India was such as few, even of 
those Europeans who have passed many years in 
that country, have attained, and such as certainly 
was never attained by any public man who had not 
quitted Europe. He had studied the history, the 
laws, and the usages of the East with an industry 
such as is seldom found united to so much genius 
and so much sensibility. Others have perhaps been 
equally laborious, and have collected an equal mass 
of materials. But the manner in which Burke 
brought his higher powers of intellect to work on 
statements of facts, and on tables of figures, was 
peculiar to himself. In every part of those huge 
bales of Indian information which repelled almost 
all other readers, his mind, at once philosophical and 
poetical, found something to instruct or to delight. 
His reason analyzed and digested those vast and 
shapeless masses ; his imagination animated and 
colored them. Out of darkness, and dulness, 
and confusion, he formed a multitude of ingenious 
theories and vivid pictures. He had, in the highest 
degree, that noble faculty whereby man is able to live 
in the past and in the future, in the distant and in 
the unreal. India and its inhabitants were not to 
him, as to most Englishmen, mere names and 
abstractions, but a real country and a real people. 
The burning sun, the strange vegetation of the palm 
and the cocoa tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge 
trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which the 
village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the 



142 WARREN HASTINGS. 

peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where 
the imaun prays with his face to Mecca, the drums, 
and banners, and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging 
in the air, the graceful maiden, with the pitcher on her 
head, descending the steps to the river-side, the black 
faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, 
the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and 
the silver maces, the elephants with their canopies of 
state, the gorgeous palanquin of the prince, and the 
close litter of the noble lady, all these things were to 
him as the objects amidst which his own life had 
been passed, as the objects which lay on the road 
between Beaconsfield and St. James's Street. All 
India was present to the eye of his mind, from the 
halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet 
of sovereigns, to the wild moor where the gypsy camp 
was pitched, from the bazaar, humming like the 
beehive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the 
jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of 
iron rings to scare away the hyaenas. He had just 
as lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of 
Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the execution 
of Nuncomar as of the execution of Dr. Dodd. 
Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as 
oppression in the streets of London. 

He saw that Hastings had been guilty of some 
most unjustifiable acts. All that followed was 
natural and necessary in a mind like Burke's. His 
imagination and his passions, once excited, hurried 
him beyond the bounds of justice and good sense. 



WARREN HASTINGS, 143 

His reason, powerful as it was, became the slave of 
feelings which it should have controlled. His indig- 
nation, virtuous in its origin, acquired too much of 
the character of personal aversion. He could see no 
mitigating circumstance, no redeeming merit. His 
temper, which, though generous and affectionate, 
had always been irritable, had now been made almost 
savage by bodily infirmities and mental vexations. 
Conscious of great powers and great virtues, he 
found himself, in age and poverty, a mark for the 
hatred of a perfidious court and a deluded people. 
In Parliament his eloquence was out of date. A 
young generation, which knew him not, had filled 
the House. Whenever he rose to speak, his voice 
was drowned by the unseemly interruption of lads 
who were in their cradles when his orations on the 
Stamp Act called forth the applause of the great Earl 
of Chatham. These things had produced on his 
proud and sensitive spirit an effect at which we 
cannot wonder. He could no longer discuss any 
question with calmness, or make allowance for 
honest differences of opinion. Those who think 
that he was more violent and acrimonious in debates 
about India than on other occasions, are ill informed 
respecting the last years of his life. In the discus- 
sions on the Commercial Treaty with the Court of 
Versailles, on the Regency, on the French Revolu- 
tion, he showed even more virulence than in conduct- 
ing the impeachment. Indeed, it may be remarked, 
that the very persons who called him a mischievous 



144 WARREN HASTINGS. 

maniac, for condemning in burning words the 
Rohilla war and the spoliation of the Begums, ex- 
alted him into a prophet as soon as he began to 
declaim, with greater vehemence, and not with 
greater reason, against the taking of the Bastile and 
the insults offered to Marie Antoinette. To us he 
appears to have been neither a maniac in the former 
case, nor a prophet in the latter, but in both cases 
a great and good man, led into extravagance by a 
sensibility which domineered over all his faculties. 

It may be doubted whether the personal antipathy 
of Francis, or the nobler indignation of Burke, 
would have led their party to adopt extreme measures 
against Hastings, if his own conduct had been judi- 
cious. He should have felt that, great as his public 
services had been, he was not faultless, and should 
have been content to make his escape, without aspir- 
ing to the honors of a triumph. He and his agent 
took a different view. They were impatient for the 
rewards which, as they conceived, were deferred 
only till Burke's attack should be over. They 
accordingly resolved to force on a decisive action 
with an enemy for whom, if they had been wise, 
they would have made a bridge of gold. On the 
first day of the session of 1786, Major Scott reminded 
Burke of the notice given in the preceding year, and 
asked whether it was seriously intended to bring any 
charge against the late Governor-General. This 
challenge left no course open to the Opposition, ex- 
cept to come forward as accusers, or to acknowledge 



WARREN HASTINGS. 145 

themselves calumniators. The administration of 
Hastings had not been so blameless, nor was the 
great party of Fox and North so feeble, that it could 
be prudent to venture on so bold a defiance. The 
leaders of the Opposition instantly returned the only 
answer which they could with honor return ; and the 
whole party was irrevocably pledged to a prosecution. 

Burke began his operations by applying for 
Papers. Some of the documents for which he asked 
were refused by the ministers, who, in the debate, 
held language such as strongly confirmed the pre- 
vailing opinion, that they intended to support 
Hastings. In April the charges were laid on the 
table. They had been drawn by Burke with great 
ability, though in a form too much resembling that 
of a pamphlet. Hastings was furnished with a copy 
of the accusation ; and it was intimated to him that 
he might, if he thought fit, be heard in his own 
defence at the bar of the Commons. 

Here again, Hastings was pursued by the same 
fatality which had attended him ever since the day 
when he set foot on English ground. It seemed to 
be decreed that this man, so politic and so successful 
in the East, should commit nothing but blunders in 
Europe. Any judicious adviser would have told him 
that the best thing which he could do, would be to 
make an eloquent, forcible, and affecting oration at 
the bar of the House ; but that if he could not trust 
himself to speak, and found it necessary to read, he 
ought to be as concise as possible. Audiences accus- 



146 WAItBEN HASTINGS, 

tomed to extemporaneous debating of the highest 
excellence, are always impatient of long written com- 
positions. Hastings, however, sat down as he would 
have done at the Government-house in Bengal, and 
prepared a paper of immense length. That paper, 
if recorded on the consultations of an Indian admin- 
istration, would have been justly praised as a very 
able minute. But it was now out of place. It fell 
flat, as the best written defence must have fallen 
flat, on an assembly accustomed to the animated and 
strenuous conflicts of Pitt and Fox. The members, 
as soon as their curiosity about the face and de- 
meanor of so eminent a stranger was satisfied, 
walked away to dinner, and left Hastings to tell his 
story till midnight to the clerks and the Serjeant-at- 
Arms. 

All preliminary steps having been duly taken, 
Burke, in the beginning of June, brought forward 
the charsre relatinsc to the Rohilla war. He acted 
discreetly in placing this accusation in the van ; for 
Dundas had formerly moved, and the House had 
adopted, a resolution condemning, in the most 
severe terms, the policy followed by Hastings with 
regard to Rohilcund. Dundas had little, or rather 
nothing, to say in defence of his own consistency ; 
but he put a bold face on the matter, and opposed 
the motion. Among other things, he declared that, 
though he still thought the Rohilla war unjustifiable, 
he considered the services which Hastings had sub- 
sequently rendered to the state fis suflScient to atone 



WARBEN HASTINGS. 147 

even for so great an offence. Pitt did not speak, 
but voted with Dundas ; and Hastings was absolved 
by a hundred and nineteen votes against sixty- 
seven. 

Hastings was now confident of victory. It 
seemed, indeed, that he had reason to be so. The 
Rohilla war was, of all his measures, that which his 
accusers might with greatest advantage assail. It 
had been condemned by the Court of Directors. 
It had been condemned by the House of Commons. 
It had been condemned by Mr. Dundas, who had 
since become the chief minister of the Crown for 
Indian affairs. Yet Burke, having chosen this 
strong ground, had been completely defeated on it. 
That, having failed here, he should succeed on any 
point, was generally thought impossible. It was 
rumored at the clubs and coffee-houses, that one, 
or perhaps two more charges would be brought for- 
ward ; that if, on those charges, the sense of the 
House of Commons should be against impeach- 
ment, the Opposition would let the matter drop, that 
Hastings would be immediately raised to the peer- 
age, decorated with the star of the Bath, sworn of 
the privy council, and invited to lend the assistance 
of his talents and experience to the India Board. 
Lord Thurlow, indeed, some months before, had 
spoken with contempt of the scruples which pre- 
vented Pitt from calling Hastings to the House of 
Lords ; and had even said that, if the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer was afraid of the Commons, there 



M8 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

*vas nothing to prevent the Keeper of the Great 
Seal from taking the royal pleasure about a patent 
of peerage. The very title was chosen. Hastings 
was to be Lord Daylesford. For, through all 
changes of scene and changes of fortune, remained 
unchanged his attachment to the spot which had 
witnessed the greatness and the fall of his family, 
and which had borne so great a part in the first 
dreams of his young ambition. 

But in a very few days these fair prospects were 
overcast. On the thirteenth of June, Mr. Fox 
brought forward, with great ability and eloquence, 
the charge respecting the treatment of Cheyte Sing. 
Francis followed on the same side. The friends of 
Hastings were in high spirits when Pitt rose. With 
his usual abundance and felicity of language, the 
Minister gave his opinion on the case. He main- 
tained that the Governor-General was justified in 
calling on the Rajah of Benares for pecuniary as- 
sistance, and in imposing a fine when that assist- 
ance was contumaciously withheld. He also 
thought that the conduct of the Governor-General 
during the insurrection had been distinguished by 
ability and presence of mind. He censured, with 
great bitterness, the conduct of Francis, both in 
India and in Parliament, as most dishonest and 
malignant. The necessary inference from Pitt's 
arguments seemed to be that Hastings ought to be 
honorably acquitted ; and both the friends and the 
opponents of the Minister expected from him a 



WAR REN HASTINGS, 149 

declaration to that effect. To the astonishment of 
all parties, he concluded by saying that, though he 
thought it right in Hastings to fine Cheyte Sing for 
contumacy, yet the amount of the fine was too great 
for the occasion. On this ground, and on this ground 
alone, did Mr. Pitt, applauding every other part of 
the conduct of Hastings with regard to Benares, 
declare that he should vote in favor of Mr. Fox's 
motion. 

The House was thunderstruck ; and it well might 
be so. For the wrong done to Cheyte Sing, even 
had it been as flagitious as Fox and Francis con- 
tended, was a trifle when compared with the horrors 
which had been inflicted on Rohilcund. But if Mr. 
Pitt's view of the case of Cheyte Sing were correct, 
there was no ground for an impeachment, or even 
for a vote of censure. If the offence of Hastings 
was really no more than this, that, having the right 
to impose a mulct, the amount of which mulct was 
not defined, but was left to be settled by his dis- 
cretion, he had, not for his own advantage, but for 
that of the state, demanded too much, was this an 
offence which required a criminal proceeding of the 
highest solemnity, a criminal proceeding to which, 
during sixty years, no public functionary had been 
subjected? We can see, we think, in what way a 
man of sense and integrity might have been induced 
to take any course respecting Hastings, except the 
course which Mr. Pitt took. Such a man might 
have thought a great example necessary, for the 



150 WARBEN HASTINGS. 

prevention of injustice, and for the vindicating of 
the national honor, and might, on that ground, have 
voted for impeachment both on the Rohilla cliarge, 
and on the Benares charge. Such a man might 
have thought that the offences of Hastings had been 
atoned for by great services, and might, on that 
ground, have voted against the impeachment, on 
both charges. With great diffidence, we give it as 
our opinion, that the most correct course would, on 
the whole, have been to impeach on the Rohilla 
charge, and to acquit on the Benares charge. Had 
the Benares charge appeared to us in the same light 
in which it appeared to Mr. Pitt, we should, without 
hesitation, have voted for acquittal on that charge. 
The one course which it is inconceivable that any 
man of a tenth part of Mr. Pitt's abilities can have 
honestly taken was the course which he took. He 
acquitted Hastings on the Rohilla charge. He 
softened down the Benares charge till it became no 
charge at all ; and then he pronounced that it con- 
tained matter for impeachment. 

Nor must it be forgotten that the principal reason 
assigned by the ministry for not impeaching Hast- 
ings on account of the Rohilla war was this, that the 
delinquencies of the early part of his administration 
had been atoned for by the excellence of the later 
part. Was it not most extraordinary that men who 
had held this language could afterwards vote that 
the later part of his administration furnished matter 
for no less than twenty articles of impeachment? 



WARREN HASTINGS. 151 

They first represented the conduct of Hastings in 
1780 and 1781 as so highly meritorious that, like 
works of supererogation in the Catholic theology, it 
ought to be efficacious for the cancelling of former 
offences ; and they then prosecuted him for his con- 
duct in 1780 and 1781. 

The general astonishment was the greater, be- 
cause, only twenty-four hours before, the members 
on whom the minister could depend had received 
the usual notes from the Treasury, begging them to 
be in their places and to vote against Mr. Fox's 
motion. It was asserted by Mr. Hastings, that, 
early on the morning of the very day on which the 
debate took place, Dundas called on Pitt, woke him, 
and was closeted with him many hours. The result 
of this conference was a determination to give up 
the late Governor-General to the vengeance of the 
Opposition. It was impossible even for the most 
powerful minister to carry all his followers with him 
in so strange a course. Several persons high in 
office, the Attorney-General, Mr. Grenville, and 
Lord Mulgrave, divided against Mr. Pitt. But the 
devoted adherents who stood by the head of the 
government without asking questions, were suffi- 
ciently numerous to turn the scale. A hundred and 
nineteen members voted for Mr. Fox's motion ; 
seventy-nine against it. Dundas silently followed 
Pitt. 

That good and great man, the late William Wilber- 
force, often related the events of this remarkable 



152 WAEBEN HASTINGS. 

night. He described the amazement of the House, 
and the bitter reflections which were muttered against 
the Prime Minister by some of the habitual sup- 
porters of government. Pitt himself appeared to 
feel that this conduct required some explanation. 
He left the Treasury bench, sat for some time next 
to Mr. Wilberforce, and very earnestly declared that 
he had found it impossible, as a man of conscience, 
to stand any longer by Hastings. The business, he 
said, was too bad. Mr. Wilberforce, we are bound 
to add, fully believed that his friend was sincere, 
and that the suspicions to which this mysterious 
affair gave rise were altogether unfounded. 

Those suspicions, indeed, were such as it is painful 
to mention. The friends of Hastings, most of 
whom, it is to be observed, generally supported the 
administration, affirmed that the motive of Pitt and 
Dundas was jealousy. Hastings was personally a 
favorite with the King. He was the idol of the East 
India Company and of its servants. If he were 
absolved by the Commons, seated among the Lords, 
admitted to the Board of Control, closely allied with 
the strong-minded and imperious Thurlow, was it 
not almost certain that he would soon draw to him- 
self the entire management of Eastern affairs ? Was 
it not possible that he might become a formidable 
rival in the cabinet? It had probably got abroad 
that very singular communications had taken place 
between Thurlow and Major Scott, and that, if the 
Fifst I^prd pf the Treasury was afraid to recommend 



WARREN HASTINGS. 153 

Hastings for a peerage, the Chancellor was ready to 
take the responsibility of that step on himself. Of 
all ministers, Pitt was the least likely to submit with 
patience to such an encroachment on his functions. 
If the Commons impeached Hastings, all danger 
was at an end. The proceeding, however it might 
terminate, would probably last some years. In the 
meantime, the accused person would be excluded 
from honors and public employments, and could 
scarcely venture even to pay his duty at court. Such 
were the motives attributed by a great part of the 
public to the young minister, whose ruling passion 
was generally believed to be avarice of power. 

The prorogation soon interrupted the discussions 
respecting Hastings. In the following year, those 
discussions were resumed. The charge touching the 
spoliation of the Begums was brought forward by 
Sheridan, in a speech which was so imperfectly re- 
ported that it may be said to be wholly lost, but 
which was, without .doubt, the most elaborately bril- 
liant of all the productions of his ingenious mind. 
The impression which it produced was such as has 
never been equalled. He sat down, not merely 
amidst cheering, but amidst the loud clapping of 
hands, in which the Lords below the bar and the 
strangers in the gallery joined. The excitement of 
the House was such that no other speaker could 
obtain a hearing ; and the debate was adjourned. 
The ferment spread fast through the town. Within 
four-and-twenty hours Sheridan was offered a thou- 



154 WARREN HASTINGS. 

sand pounds for the copyright of his speech, if he 
would himself correct it for the press. The impres- 
sion made by this remarkable display of eloquence 
on severe and experienced critics, whose discern- 
ment may be supposed to have been quickened by 
emulation, was deep and permanent. Mr. Wind- 
ham, twenty years later, said that the speech 
deserved all its fame, and was, in spite of some 
faults of taste, such as were seldom wanting either 
in the literary or in the parliamentary performances 
of Sheridan, the finest that had been delivered 
within the memory of man. Mr. Fox, about the 
same time, being asked by the late Lord Holland, 
what was the best speech ever made in the House 
of Commons, assigned the first place, without hesi- 
tation, to the great oration of Sheridan on the 
Oude charge. 

"When the debate was resumed, the tide ran so 
strongly against the accused that his friends were 
coughed and scraped down. Pitt declared himself 
for Sheridan's motion ; and the question was carried 
by a hundred and seventy-five votes against sixty- 
eight. 

The Opposition, flushed with victory and strongly 
supported by the public sympathy, proceeded to bring 
forward a succession of charges relating chiefly to 
pecuniary transactions. The friends of Hastings 
were discouraged, and, having now no hope of being 
able to avert an impeachment, were not very strenu- 
ous in their exertions. At length the House, having 



WARREN HASTINGS. 155 

agreed to twenty articles of charge, directed Burke to 
go before the Lords, and to impeacli the late Gov- 
ernor-General of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. 
Hastings was at the same time arrested by the 
Serjeant-at-Arms, and carried to the bar of the 
Peers. 

The session was now within ten days of its close. 
It was, therefore, impossible that any progress could 
be made in the trial till the next year. Hastings 
was admitted to bail ; and further proceedings were 
postponed till the Houses should re-assemble. 

When Parliament met in the following winter, the 
Commons proceeded to elect a committee for man- 
aging the impeachment. Burke stood at the head ; 
and with him were associated most of the leading 
members of the Opposition. But when the name of 
Francis was read a fierce contention arose. It was 
said that Francis and Hastings were notoriously on 
bad terms, that they had been at feud duiing many 
years, that on one occasion their mutual aversion had 
impelled them to seek each other's lives, and that it 
would be improper and indelicate to select a private 
enemy to be a public accuser. It was urged on the 
other side with great force, particularly by Mr. 
Windham, that impartiality, though the first duty of 
a judge, had never been reckoned among the quali- 
ties of an advocate ; that in the ordinary administra- 
tion of criminal justice among the English, the 
aggrieved party, the very last person who ought to 
be admitted into the jury-box, is the prosecutor ; 



156 WAUUEN HASTINGS, 

that what was wanted in a manager was, not that 
he should be free from bias, but that he should be 
able, well informed, energetic, and active. The abil- 
ity and information of Francis were admitted ; and 
the very animosity with which he was reproached, 
whether a virtue or a vice, was at least a pledge for 
his energy and activity. It seems difficult to refute 
these arguments. But the inveterate hatred borne 
by Francis to Hastings had excited general disgust. 
The House decided that Francis should not be a 
manager. Pitt voted with the majority, Dundas with 
the minority. 

In the meantime, the preparations for the trial had 
proceeded rapidly ; and on the thirteenth of February, 
1788, the sittings of the Court commenced. There 
have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more 
gorgeous with jewellery and cloth o^ gold, more 
attractive to grown-up children, than that which was 
then exhibited at AVestminster ; but, perhaps, there 
never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a 
highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. 
All the various kinds of interest which belong to 
the near and to the distant, to the present and to the 
past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. 
All the talents and all the accomplishments which 
are developed by liberty and civilization were now 
displayed, with every advantage that could be derived 
both from co-operation and from contrast. Every 
step in the proceedings carried the mind either back- 
ward, through many troubled centuries, to the days 



WABBEN HASTINGS, 157 

when the foundations of our constitution were laid ; 
or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to 
dusky nations living under strange stars, worship- 
ping strange gods, and writing strange characters 
from right to left. The Hioh Court of Parliament 
was to sit, according to forms handed down from 
the days of the Plantageuets, on an Englishman 
accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the 
holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the 
princely house of Oude. 

The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the 
great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had re- 
sounded with acclamations at the inauguration of 
thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just 
sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, 
the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a 
moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed 
with just resentment, the hall where Charles had 
confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid 
courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither 
military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues 
were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept 
clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and 
ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under Garter 
King-at-Arms. The judges, in their vestments of 
state, attended to give advice on points of law. 
Near a hundred and seventy Lords, three-fourths of 
the Upper House as the Upper House then was, 
walked in solemn order from their usual place of 
assembling to the tribunal. The junior Baron 



158 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

present led the way, George Eliott, Lord Heathfield, 
recently ennobled for his memorable defence of 
Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France and 
Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke 
of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great 
dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the 
King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, con- 
spicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The 
gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long 
galleries were crowded by an audience such as has 
rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. 
There were gathered together, from all parts of a 
great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, 
grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the 
representatives of every science and of every art. 
There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired 
young daughters of the house of Brunswick. There 
the ambassadors of great Kings and Commonwealths 
gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other 
country in the world could present. There Siddons, 
in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with 
emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the 
stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire 
thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause 
of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a Senate 
which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus 
thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There 
were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and 
the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had 
allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved 



WARREN HASTINGS. 159 

to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers 
and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many 
noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his 
labors in that dark and profound mine from which he 
had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure 
too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with 
injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still pre- 
cious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the 
voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the 
throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too 
was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, 
the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted 
up by love and music, art has rescued from a com- 
mon decay. There were the members of that brilliant 
society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged 
repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. 
Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more 
persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried 
the Westminster election against palace and treasury, 
shone round Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. 

The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings ad- 
vanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit 
was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He 
had ruled an extensive and populous country, had 
made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had 
set up and pulled down princes. And in his high 
place he had so borne himself, that all had feared 
him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself 
could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He 
looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. 



160 WAEEEN HASTINGS. ^ 

A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity 
from a carriage which, while it indicated deference 
to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession 
and self-respect, a high and intellectual forehead, a 
brow pensive, but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible 
decision, a face pale and worn, but serene, on which 
was written, as legibly as under the picture in the 
council-chamber at Calcutta, Mens mqua in arduis; 
such was the aspect with which the great Proconsul 
presented himself to his judges. 

His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom 
were afterwards raised by their talents and learning 
to the highest posts in their profession, the bold and 
strong-minded Law, afterwards Chief Justice of the 
King's Bench ; the more humane and eloquent 
Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common 
Pleas ; and Plomer, who, nearly twenty years later, 
successfully conducted in the same high court the 
defence of Lord Melville, and subsequently became 
Vice-chancellor and Master of the Rolls. 

But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted 
so much notice as the accusers. In the midst of the 
blaze of red drapery, a space had been fitted up with 
green benches and tables for the Commons. The 
managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in full 
dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to 
remark that even Fox, generally so regardless of his 
appearance, had paid to the illustrious tribunal the 
compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had 
refused to be one of the conductors of the impeach- 



WARREN HASTINGS. 161 

ment ; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous 
eloquence was wanting to that great muster of 
various talents. Age and blindness had unfitted 
Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor ; and 
his friends were left without the help of his excellent 
sense, his tact, and his urbanity. But in spite of 
the absence of these two distinguished members of the 
Lower House, the box in which the managers stood 
contained an array of speakers such as perhaps had 
not -appeared together since the great age of Athenian 
eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the 
English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. 
There was Burke, ignorant, indeed, or negligent of 
the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to 
the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in ampli- 
tude of comprehension and richness of imagination 
superior to every orator, ancient or modern. There, 
with eyes reverentially fixed on Burke, appeared the 
finest gentleman of the age, his form developed by 
every manly exercise, his face beaming with intelli- 
gence and spirit, the ingenious, the chivalrous, the 
high-souled Windham. Nor, though surrounded by 
such men, did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. 
At an age when most of those who distinguish them- 
selves in life are still contending for prizes and 
fellowships at college, he had won for himself a con- 
spicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of 
fortune or connection was wanting that could set off 
to the height his splendid talents and his unblem- 
ished honor. At twenty-three he had been thought 



162 WAEBEN HASTINGS. 

worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who 
appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, 
at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at 
that bar, save him alone, are gone, culprit, advo- 
cates, accusers. To the generation which is now in 
the vigor of life, he is the sole representative of a 
great age which has passed away. But those who, 
within the last ten years, have listened with delight, 
till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the 
House of Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence 
of Charles Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate 
of the powers of a race of men among whom he was 
not the foremost. 

The charges and the answers of Hastings were 
first read. The ceremony occupied two whole days, 
and was rendered less tedious than it would otherwise 
have been by the silver voice and just emphasis of 
Cowper, the clerk of the court, a near relation of 
the amiable poet. On the third day Burke rose. 
Four sittings were occupied by his opening speech, 
which was intended to be a general introduction to 
all the charges. With an exuberance of thought 
and a splendor of diction which more than satisfied 
the highly raised expectation of the audience, 
he described the character and institutions of the 
natives of India, recounted the circumstances in 
which the Asiatic empire of Britain had originated, 
and set forth the constitution of the Company and 
of the English Presidencies. Having thus attempted 
to communicate to his hearers an idea of Eastern 



WAEEEN HASTINGS. 163 

society as vivid as that which existed in his own 
raind, he proceeded to arraign the administration of 
Hastings as systematically conducted in defiance of 
morality and public law. The energy and pathos 
of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted 
admiration from the stern and hostile Chancellor, 
and, for a moment, seemed to pierce even the reso- 
lute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the gal- 
leries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, 
excited by the solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps 
not unwilling to display their taste and sensibility, 
were in a state of uncontrollable emotion. Handker- 
chiefs were pulled out ; smelling bottles were handed 
round ; hysterical sobs and screams were heard : and 
Mrs. Sheiddan was carried out in a fit. At length 
the orator concluded. Raising his voice till the old 
arches of Irish oak resounded, "Therefore," said 
he, " hath it with all confidence been ordered, by the 
Commons of Great Britain, that I impeach Warren 
Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors. I im- 
peach him in the name of the Common House of 
Parliament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach 
him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient 
honor he has sullied. I impeach him in the name 
of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden 
under foot, and whose country he has turned into a 
desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, 
in the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, 
in the name of every rank, I impeach the common 
enemy and oppressor of all ! " 



164 WAEREN HASTINGS. 

When the deep murmur of various emotions had 
subsided, Mr. Fox rose to address the Lords re- 
specting the course of proceeding to be followed. 
The wish of the accusers was that the Court would 
bring to a close the investigation of the first charge 
before the second was opened. The wish of Hastings 
and of his counsel was that the managers should 
open all the charges, and produce all the evidence 
for the prosecution, before the defence began. The 
Lords retired to their own House to consider the 
question. The Chancellor took the side of Hastings. 
Lord Loughborough, who was now in opposition, 
supported the demand of the managers. The divis- 
ion showed which way the inclination of the tribunal 
leaned. A majority of near three to one decided in 
favor of the course for which Hastings contended. 

When the Court sat again, Mr. Fox, assisted by 
Mr. Grey, opened the charge respecting Cheyte 
Sing, and several days were spent in reading papers 
and hearing witnesses. The next article was that 
relating to the Princesses of Oude. The conduct of 
this part of the case was intrusted to Sheridan. 
The curiosity of the public to hear him was un- 
bounded. His sparkling and highly finished decla- 
mation lasted two days ; but the Hall was crowded 
to suffocation during the whole time. It was said 
that fifty guineas had been paid for a single ticket. 
Sheridan, when he concluded, contrived, with a 
knowledge of stage effect which his father might 
have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, into 



WABREN HASTINGS. 165 

the arms of Burke, who hugged him with the energy 
of generous admiration. 

June was now far advanced. The session could 
not last much longer ; and the progress which had 
been made in the impeachment was not very satis- 
factory. There were twenty charges. On two only 
of these had even the case for the prosecution been 
heard ; and it was now a year since Hastings had 
been admitted to bail. 

The interest taken by the public in the trial was 
great when the Court began to sit, and rose to the 
height when Sheridan spoke on the charge relating 
to the Begums. From that time the excitement 
went down fast. The spectacle had lost the attrac- 
tion of novelty. The great displays of rhetoric 
were over. What was behind was not of a nature 
to entice men of letters from their books in the 
morning, or to tempt ladies who had left the mas- 
querade at two to be out of bed before eight. 
There remained examinations and cross examina- 
tions. There remained statements of accounts, 
there remained the reading of papers, filled 'with 
words unintelligible to English ears, with lacs and 
crores, zemindars and aumils, sunnuds and perwan- 
nahs, jaghires and nuzzurs. There remained bick- 
erings, not always carried on with the best taste or 
with the best temper, between the managers of the 
impeachment and the counsel for the defence, par- 
ticularly between Mr. Burke and Mr. Law. There 
remained the endless marches and countermarches 



166 WABEEN HASTINGS. 

of the peers between their House and the Hall : for 
as often as a point of law was to be discussed, their 
Lordships retired to discuss it apart ; and the con- 
sequence was, as a Peer wittily said, that the judges 
walked and the trial stood still. 

It is to be added that, in the spring of 1788, 
when the trial commenced, no important question, 
either of domestic or foreign policy, occupied the 
public mind. The proceeding in Westminster Hall, 
therefore, naturally attracted most of the attention 
of Parliament and of the country. It was the one 
great event of that season. But in the following 
year the King's illness, the debates on the Regency, 
the expectation of a change of ministry, completely 
diverted public attention from Indian affairs ; and 
within a fortnight after George the Third had re- 
turned thanks in St. Paul's for his recovery, the 
States-General of France met at Versailles. In the 
midst of the agitation produced by these events, 
the impeachment was for a time almost forgotten. 

The trial in the Hall went on languidly. In the 
session of 1788, when the proceedings had the inter- 
est of novelty, and when the Peers had little other 
business before them, only thirty-five days were 
given to the impeachment. In 1789 the Regency 
Bill occupied the Upper House till the session was 
far advanced. When the King recovered, the cir- 
cuits were beginning. The judges left town ; the 
Lords waited for the return of the oracles of juris- 
prudence ; and the consequence was that during the 



WABREN HASTINGS, 167 

whole year, only seventeen days were given to the 
case of Hastings. It was clear that the matter 
would be protracted to a length unprecedented in 
the annals of criminal law. 

In truth, it is impossible to deny that impeach- 
ment, though it is a fine ceremony, and though it 
may have been useful in the seventeenth century, is 
not a proceeding from which much good can now be 
expected. Whatever confidence may be placed in 
the decision of the Peers, on an appeal arising out 
of ordinary litigation, it is certain that no man has 
the least confidence in their impartiality when a 
great public functionary, charged with a great state 
crime, is brought to their bar. They are all politi- 
j cians. There is hardly one among them whose vote 
I on an impeachment may not be confidently predicted 
' before a witness has been examined ; and, even if 
it were possible to rely on their justice, they would 
still be quite unfit to try such a cause as that of 
Hastings. They sit only during half the year. 
They have to transact much legislative and much 
judicial business. The law-lords, whose advice is 
required to guide the unlearned majority, are em- 
ployed daily in administering justice elsewhere. It 
is impossible, therefore, that during a busy session, 
the Upper House should give more than a few days 
to an impeachment. To expect that their Lord- 
ships would give up partridge-shooting, in order to 
bring the greatest delinquent to speedy justice, or to 
relieve accused innocence by speedy acquittal, would 



168 WABREN HASTINGS. 

be unreasonable indeed. A well constituted tri- 
bunal, sitting regularly six days in the week, and 
nine hours in the day, would have brought the trial 
of Hastings to a close in less than three months. 
The Lords had not finished their work in seven 
years. 

The result ceased to be matter of doubt, from 
the time when the Lords resolved that they would 
be guided by the rules of evidence which are re- 
ceived in the inferior courts of the realm. Those 
rules, it is well known, exclude much information 
which would be quite sufficient to determine the con- 
duct of any reasonable man, in the most important 
transactions of private life. Those rules, at every 
assizes, save scores of culprits whom judges, jury, 
and spectators, firmly believe to be guilty. But 
when those rules were rigidly applied to offences 
committed many years before, at the distance of 
many thousands of miles, conviction was, of course, 
out of the question. We do not blame the accused 
and his counsel for availing themselves of every 
legal advantage in order to obtain an acquittal. But 
it is clear that an acquittal so obtained cannot be 
pleaded in bar of the judgment of history. 

Several attempts were made by the friends of 
Hastings to put a stop to the trial. In 1789 they 
proposed a vote of censure upon Burke, for some 
violent language which he had used respecting the 
death of Nuncomar and the connection between 
Hastings and Impey. Burke was then unpopular in 



WARBEN HASTINGS, 169 

the last degree both with the House and with the 
country. The asperity and indecency of some ex- 
pressions which he had used during the debates on 
the Regency, had annoyed even his warmest friends. 
The vote of censure was carried ; and those who 
had moved it hoped that the managers would resign 
in disgust. Burke was deeply hurt. But his zeal 
for what he considered as the cause of justice and 
mercy triumphed over his personal feelings. He 
received the censure of the House with dignity and 
meekness, and declared that no personal mortification 
or humiliation should induce him to flinch from the 
sacred duty which he had undertaken. 

In the following year the Parliament was dissolved : 
and the friends of Hastings entertained a hope that 
the new House of Commons might not be disposed 
to go on with the impeachment. They began by 
maintaining that the whole proceeding was terminated 
by the dissolution. Defeated on this point, they 
made a direct motion that the impeachment should 
be dropped ; but they were defeated by the combined 
forces of the Government and the Opposition. It 
was, however, resolved that, for the sake of expe- 
dition, many of the articles should be withdrawn. 
In truth, had not some such measure been adopted, 
the trial would have lasted till the defendant was in 
his grave. 

At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was 
pronounced, near eight years after Hastings had been 
brought by the Serjeant-at-Arms of the Commons 



170 WAUBEN HASTINGS. 

to the Bar of the Lords. On the last day of this 
great procedure the public curiosity, long suspended, 
seemed to be revived. Anxiety about the judgment 
there could be none ; for it had been fully ascertained 
that there was a great majority for the defendant. 
Nevertheless, many wished to see the pageant, and 
the Hall was as much crowded as on the first day. 
But those who, having been present on the first day, 
now bore a part in the proceedings of the last, were 
few ; and most of those few were altered men. 

As Hastings himself said, the arraignment had 
taken place before one generation, and the judgment 
was pronounced by another. The spectator could 
not look at the Woolsack, or at the red benches of 
the Peers, or at the green benches of the Commons, 
without seeing something that reminded him of the 
instability of all human things, of the instability of 
power and fame and life, of the more lamentable 
instability of friendship. The great seal was borne 
before Lord Loughborough, who, when the trial 
commenced, was a fierce opponent of Mr. Pitt's 
government, and who was now a member of that 
government, while Thurlow, who presided in the 
court when it first sat, estranged from all his old 
allies, sat scowling among the junior barons. Of 
about a hundred and sixty nobles who walked in the 
procession on the first day, sixty had been laid in 
their family vaults. Still more affecting must have 
been the sight of the manager's box. What had 
become of that fair fellowship, so closely bound 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 171 

together by public and private ties, so resplendent 
with every talent and accomplishment ? It had been 
scattered by calamities more bitter than the bitter- 
ness of death. The great chiefs were still living, 
and still in the full vigor of their genius. But their 
friendship was at an end. It had been violently and 
publicly dissolved, with tears and stormy reproaches. 
If those men, once so dear to each other, were now 
compelled to meet for the purpose of managing the 
impeachment, they met as strangers whom public 
business had brought together, and behaved to each 
other with cold and distant civility. Burke had in 
his vortex whirled away Windham ; Fox had been 
followed by Sheridan and Grey. 

Only twenty-nine Peers voted. Of these, only six 
found Hastings guilty on the charges relating to 
Cheyte Sing and to the Begums. On other charges, 
the majority in his favor was still greater. On some 
he was unanimously absolved. He was then called 
to the Bar, was informed from the Woolsack that 
the Lords had acquitted him, and was solemnly dis- 
charged. He bowed respectfully and retired. 

We have said that the decision had been fully 
expected. It was also generally approved. At the 
commencement of the trial there had been a strong 
and indeed unreasonable feeling against Hastings. 
At the close of the trial there was a feeling equally 
strong and equally unreasonable in his favor. One 
cause of the change was, no doubt, what is commonly 
called the fickleness of the multitude, but what 



172 WARREN HASTINGS. 

seems to us to be merely the general law of human 
nature. Both in individuals and in masses violent 
excitement is always followed by remission, and 
often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate 
whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other 
hand, to show undue indulgence where we have 
shown undue rigor. It was thus in the case of Hast- 
ings. The length of his trial, moreover, made him 
an object of compassion. It was thought, and not 
without reason, that, even if he was guilty, he was 
still an ill-used man, and that an impeachment of 
eight years was more than a sufficient punishment. 
It was also felt that, though, in ordinary course of 
criminal law, a defendant is not allowed to set off 
his good actions against his crimes, a great political 
cause should be tried on different principles, and 
that a man who had governed an empire during 
thirteen years might have done some very reprehen- 
sible things, and yet might be on the whole deserv- 
ing of rewards and honors rather than of fine and 
imprisonment. The press, an instrument neglected 
by the prosecutors, was used by Hastings and his 
friends with great effect. Every ship, too, that ar- 
rived from Madras or Bengal, brought a cuddy full 
of his admirers. Every gentleman from India spoke 
of the late Governor-General as having deserved 
better, and having been treated worse, than any 
man living. The effect of this testimony unani- 
mously given by all persons who knew the East, 
was naturally very great. Retu-ed members of the 



WARBEN HASTINGS. 173 

Indian services, civil and military, were settled in 
all corners of the kingdom. Each of them was, of 
course, in his own little circle, regarded as an oracle 
on an Indian question ; and they were, with scarcely 
one exception, the zealous advocates of Hastings. 
It is to be added, that the numerous addresses to the 
late Governor-General, which his friends in Bengal 
obtained from the natives and transmitted to Eng- 
land, made a considerable impression. To these 
addresses we attach little or no importance. That 
Hastings was beloved by the people whom he 
governed is true ; but the eulogies of pundits, zem- 
indars, Mahommedan doctors, do not prove it to be 
true. For an English collector or judge would have 
found it easy to induce any native who could write 
to sign a panegyric on the most odious ruler that 
ever was in India. It was said that at Benares, the 
very place at which the acts set forth in the first 
article of impeachment had been committed, the 
natives had erected a temple to Hastings ; and this 
story excited a strong sensation in England. Burke's 
observations on the apotheosis were admirable. He 
saw no reason for astonishment, he said, in the in- 
cident which had been represented as so striking. 
He knew something of the mythology of the 
Brahmins. He knew that as they worshipped some 
gods from love, so they worshipped others from fear. 
He knew that they erected shrines, not only to the 
benignant deities of light and plenty, but also to the 
fiends who preside over small- pox and murder ; nor 



174 WABEEN BASTINGS, 

did he at all dispute the claim of Mr. Hastings to 
be admitted into such a Pantheon. This reply has 
always struck us as one of the finest that ever was 
made in Parliament. It is a grave and forcible 
argument, decorated by the most brilliant wit and 
fancy. 

Hastings was, however, safe. But in everything, 
except character, he would have been far better off if, 
when first impeached, he had at once pleaded guilty, 
and paid a fine of fifty thousand pounds. He was a 
ruined man. The legal expenses of his defence had 
been enormous. The expenses which did not ap- 
pear in his attorney's bill were perhaps larger still. 
Great sums had been paid to Major Scott. Great 
sums had been laid out in bribing newspapers, 
rewarding pamphleteers, and circulating tracts. 
Burke, so early as 1790, declared in the' House of 
Commons that twenty thousand pounds had been 
employed in corrupting the press. It is certain that 
no controversial weapon, from the gravest reasoning 
to the coarsest ribaldry, was left unemployed. 
Logan defended the accused Governor with great 
ability in prose. For the lovers of verse, the 
speeches of the managers were burlesqued in Sim- 
kin's letters. It is, we are afraid, indisputable that 
Hastings stooped so low as to court the aid of that 
malignant and filthy baboon John Williams, who 
called himself Anthony Pasquin. It was necessary 
to subsidize such allies largely. The private hoards 
of Mrs. Hastings had disappeared. It is said that 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 175 

the banker to whom they had been intrusted had 
failed. Still if Hastings had practised strict econ- 
omy, he would, after all his losses, have had a mod- 
erate competence ; but in the management of his 
private affairs he was imprudent. The dearest 
wish of his heart had always been to regain Dayles- 
ford. At length, in the very year in which his trial 
commenced, the wish was accomplished ; and the 
domain, alienated more than seventy years before, 
returned to the descendant of its old lords. But 
the manor house was a ruin ; and the grounds round 
it had, during many years, been utterly neglected. 
Hastings proceeded to build, to plant, to form a sheet 
of water, to excavate a grotto ; and before he was 
dismissed from the Bar of the House of Lords, he 
had expended more than forty thousand pounds in 
adorning his seat. 

The general feeling both of the directors and of 
the proprietors of the East India Company was that 
he had great claims on them, that his services to 
them had been eminent, and that his misfortunes 
had been the effect of his zeal for their interest. 
His friends in Leadenhall Street proposed to reim- 
burse him the costs of his trial, and to settle on him 
an annuity of five thousand pounds a year. But 
the consent of the Board of Control was necessary ; 
and at the head of the Board of Control was Mr. 
Dundas, who had himself been a party to the im- 
peachment, who had, on that account, been reviled 
with great bitterness by the adherents of Hastings, 



176 WAEBEN HASTINGS. 

and who, therefore, was not in a very complying 
mood. He refused to consent to what the directors 
suggested. The directors remonstrated. A long 
controversy followed. Hastings, in the meantime, 
was reduced to such distress that he could hardly 
pay his weekly bills. At length a compromise was 
made. An annuity for life of four thousand pounds 
was settled on Hastings ; and in order to enable him 
to meet pressing demands, he was to receive ten 
years annuity in advance. The Company was also 
permitted to lend him fifty thousand pounds, to be 
repaid by instalments without interest. This relief, 
though given in the most absurd manner, was 
sufficient to enable the retired Governor to live in 
comfort, and even in luxury, if he had been a skil- 
ful manager. But he was so careless and profuse, 
that he was more than once under the necessity of 
applying to the Company for assistance, which was 
liberally given. 

He had security and affluence, but not the power 
and dignity which, when he landed from India, he 
had reason to expect. He had then looked forward 
to a coronet, a red riband, a seat at the Council 
Board, an office at Whitehall. He was then only 
fifty-two, and might hope for many years of bodily 
and mental vigor. The case was widely different 
when he left the Bar of the Lords. He was now 
too old a man to turn his mind to a new class of 
studies and duties. He had no chance of receiving 
any mark of royal favor while Mr. Pitt remained in 



WARREN HASTINGS. 177 

power ; and, when Mr. Pitt retired, Hastings was 
approaching his seventieth year. 

Once, and only once, after his acquittal, he inter- 
fered in politics ; and that interference was not 
much to his honor. In 1804 he exerted himself 
strenuously to prevent Mr. Addington, against whom 
Fox and Pitt had combined, from resigning the 
Treasury. It is difficult to believe that a man, so 
able and energetic as Hastings, can have thought 
that, when Bonaparte was at Boulogne with a great 
army, the defence of our island could safely be in- 
trusted to a ministry which did not contain a single 
person whom flattery could describe as a great 
statesman. It is also certain that, on the important 
question which had raised Mr. Addington to power, 
and on which he differed from both Fox and Pitt, 
Hastings, as might have been expected, agreed with 
Fox and Pitt, and was decidedly opposed to Ad- 
dington. Religious intolerance has never been the 
vice of the Indian service, and certainly was not 
the vice of Hastings. But Mr. Addington had 
treated him with marked favor. Fox had been a 
principal manager of the impeachment. To Pitt 
it was owing that there had been an impeachment ; 
and Hastings, we fear, was on this occasion guided 
by personal considerations, rather than by a regard 
to the public interest. 

The last twenty-four years of his life were chiefly 
passed at Daylesford. He amused himself by enj- 
bellishing his grounds, riding fine Arab hQr§e§, 



178^ WABBEN HASTINGS, 

fattening prize cattle, and trying to rear Indian 
animals and vegetables in England. He sent for 
seeds of a very fine custard-apple, from the garden 
of what had once been his own villa, among the green 
hedgerows of Allipore. He tried also to naturalize 
in Worcestershire the delicious leechee, almost the 
only fruit of Bengal which deserves to be regretted 
even amidst the plenty of Covent Garden. The 
Mogul emperors, in the time of their greatness, had 
in vain attempted to introduce in Hindostan the goat 
of the table-land of Thibet, whose down supplies the 
looms of Cashmere with the materials of the finest 
shawls, Hastings tried, with no better fortune, to 
rear a breed at Daylesford ; nor does he seem to 
have succeeded better with the cattle of Bootan, 
whose tails are in high esteem as the best fans for 
brushing away the mosquitoes. 

Literature divided his attention with his conserva- 
tories and his menagerie. He had always loved 
books, and they were now necessary to him. Though 
Biot a poet, in any high sense of the word, he wrote 
neat 9-nd polished lines with great facility, and was 
toud of exercising this talent. Indeed, if we must 
speak out, he seems to have been more of a Trissotin 
than was to be expected from the powers of his 
mind, and from the great part which he had played 
in life. We are assured in these Memoirs that the 
first thing which he did in the morning was to write 
a copy of verses. When the family and guests 
assembled, the poem made its appearance as regu- 



WABBEN HASTINGS. 179 

larly as the eggs and rolls ; and Mr. Gleig requires 
us to believe that, if from any accident Hastings 
came to the breakfast-table without one of his charm- 
ing performances in his hand, the omission was felt 
by all as a grievous disappointment. Tastes differ 
widely. For ourselves, we must say that, however 
good the breakfast at Daylesford may have been (and 
we are assured that the tea was of the most aromatic 
flavor, and that neither tongue nor venison-pasty was 
wanting) , we should have thought the reckoning high 
if we had been forced to earn our repast by listening 
every day to a new madrigal or sonnet composed by 
our host. We are glad, however, that Mr. Gleig 
has preserved this little feature of character, though 
we think it by no means a beauty. It is good to be 
often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, 
and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on 
the weaknesses which are found in the strongest 
minds. Dionysius in old times, Frederic in the last 
century, with capacity and vigor equal to the conduct 
of the greatest affairs, united all the little vanities 
and affectations of provincial blue-stockings. These 
great examples may console the admirers of Hastings 
for the affliction of seeing him reduced to the level 
of the Hayleys and Sewards. 

When Hastings had passed many years in retire- 
ment, and had long outlived the common age of men, 
he again became for a short time an object of gen- 
eral attention. In 1813 the charter of the East 
India Company was renewed ; and much discussion 



180 WARREN HASTINGS. 

about Indian affairs took place in Parliament. It 
was determined to examine witnesses at the Bar of 
the Commons ; and Hastings was ordered to attend. 
He had appeared at that Bar once before. It was 
when he read his answer to the charges which Burke 
had laid on the table. Since that time twenty-seven 
years had elapsed ; public feeling had undergone a 
complete change ; the nation had now forgotten his 
faults, and remembered only his services. The re- 
appearance, too, of a man who had been among the 
most distinguished of a generation that had passed 
away, who now belonged to history, and who seemed 
to have risen from the dead, could not but produce 
a solemn and pathetic effect. The Commons received 
him with acclamations, ordered a chair to be set for 
him, and, when he retired, rose and uncovered. 
There were, indeed, a few who did not sympathize 
with the general feeling. One or two of the mana- 
gers of the impeachment were present. They sate in 
the same seats which they had occupied when they 
had been thanked for the services which they had 
rendered in Westminster Hall : for, by the courtesy 
of the House, a member who has been thanked in 
his place is considered as having a right always to 
occupy that place. These gentlemen were not dis- 
posed to admit that they had employed several of 
the best years of their lives in persecuting an innocent 
man. They accordingly kept their seats and pulled 
their hats over their brows ; but the exceptions only 
made the prevailing enthusiasm more remarkable. 



WAUHEN HASTINGS. 181 

The Lords received the old man with similar tokens 
of respect. The University of Oxford conferred on 
him the degree of Doctor of Laws ; and, in the 
Sheldonian Theatre, the undergraduates welcomed 
him with tumultuous cheering. 

These marks of public esteem were soon followed 
by marks of royal favor. Hastings was sworn of 
the Privy Council, and was admitted to a long private 
audience of the Prince Regent, who treated him very 
graciously. When the Emperor of Russia and the 
King of Prussia visited England, Hastings appeared 
in their train both at Oxford, and in the Guildhall 
of London, and, though surrounded by a crowd of 
princes and great warriors, was everywhere received 
with marks of respect and admiration. He was pre- 
sented by the Prince Regent both to Alexander and 
to Frederick William ; and his royal highness went 
so far as to declare in public that honors far higher 
than a seat in the Privy Council were due, and would 
soon be paid, to the man who had saved the British 
dominions in Asia. Hastings now confidently ex- 
pected a peerage ; but, from some unexplained cause, 
he was again disappointed. 

He lived about four years longer, in the enjoy- 
ment of good spirits, of faculties not impaired to 
any painful or degrading extent, and of health such 
as is rarely enjoyed by those who attain such an 
age. At length, on the twenty-second of August, 
1818, in the eighty-sixth year of his age, he met 
death with the same tranquil and decorous fortitude 



182 WABBEN HASTINGS. 

which he had opposed to all the trials of his vari- 
ous and eventful life. 

With all his faults, and they were neither few nor 
small, only one cemetery was worthy to contain his 
remains. In that temple of silence and reconcilia- 
tion, where the enmities of twenty generations lie 
buried, in the Great Abbey which has during many 
ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose 
minds and bodies have been shattered by the con- 
tentions of the Great Hall, the dust of the illustrious 
accused should have mingled with the dust of the 
illustrious accusers. This was not to be. Yet 
the place of interment was not ill chosen. Behind 
the chancel of the parish church of Daylesford, in 
earth which already held the bones of many chiefs 
of the house of Hastings, was laid the coffin of the 
greatest man who has ever borne that ancient and 
widely extended name. On that very spot, prob- 
ably, fourscore years before, the little Warren, 
meanly clad and scantily fed, had played with the 
children of the ploughmen. Even then his young 
mind had resolved plans which might be called ro- 
mantic. Yet, however romantic, it is not likely 
that they had been so strange as the truth. Not 
only had the poor orphan retrieved the fallen for- 
tunes of his line ; not only had he re-purchased the 
old lands, and rebuilt the old dwelling ; he had pre- 
served and extended an empire. He had founded a 
polity. He had administered government and war 
with more than the capacity of Richelieu. He had 



WABBEN HASTmas. 183 

patronized learning with the judicious liberality of 
Cosmo. He had been attacked by the most formid- 
able combination of enemies that ever sought the 
destruction of a single victim ; and over that com- 
bination, after a struggle of ten years, he had tri- 
umphed. He had at length gone down to his grave 
in the fulness of age, in peace after so many 
troubles, in honor after so much obloquy. 

Those who look on his character without favor 
or malevolence will pronounce that, in the two 
great elements of all social virtue, in respect for the 
rights of others, and in sympathy for the sufferings 
of others, he was deficient. His principles were 
somewhat lax. His heart was somewhat hard. 
But though we cannot with truth describe him either 
as a righteous or as a merciful ruler, we cannot re- 
gard without admiration the amplitude and fertility 
of his intellect, his rare talents for command, for 
administration, and for controversy, his dauntless 
courage, his honorable poverty, his fervent zeal for 
the interests of the state, his noble equanimity, tried 
by both extremes of fortune, and never disturbed 
by either. 



Recommended Supplementary Reading, 



Four new volumes in the Garnet Series. 



READINGS FROM MILTON. With introduction by Bishop Henry 

W. Warren, D.D., LL.D $0.75 

READINGS FROM GOLDSMITH. With introduction by Edward 

Everett Hale, D.D., LL.D 75 

ASCHAM AND ARNOLD. With introduction by James H. Carlisle, ' 
D.D., President Wofford College 75 

SELECTED ESSAYS OF ADDISON. With introduction by C. T. Win- 

CHESTER, Professor of English Literature at Wesleyan University, .75 

The Entire Set in a Neat Box, $3.00, by maif, postpaid. 

" One can hardly say too much in praise of this little library." — Boston 
Evening Transcript. 

" The Chautauqua Press has only to continue to publish such volumes as 
these to fulfil its promise to provide for its students a library of choice litera- 
ture." — New-York Obserxier. 

"The volumes are excellent, and deserve a very wide circulation. Begin- 
ners in the reading of our best literature should not fail to possess themselves 
of this Garnet Series, which is altogether unexceptionable, and cannot fail 
to do great good." — The Beacon, Boston. 

THE NEW CAME OF MYTHOLOGY. 

Roman and Greek. 

Interesting and instructive. Contains one hundred cards, grouped into 
books of from three to six cards each, not arbitrarily, but according to a nat- 
ural classification. This is a special feature of this game, and is a most valu- 
able aid to the memory, and to an intelligent grasp of the subject. As an 
additional feature, well-executed outline cuts are given of the chief deities, 
taken in almost every case from some famous statue or picture, Beautifully 
printed in colors and put up in a neat box. Price 50 cts., by mail, postpaid. 

HOME STATIONERY FOR C. L. S. G. 

Each class printed in different color, on paper of the finest quality, 
and put up in attractive style, in one and two quire boxes. 

See what High Praise it has Received. 

Hon. Henderson Elliott, Vice-President Class of 1882, writes: "The 
designs for the various classes are exceedingly neat and appropriate. That 
of the class of 1882 strikes me exactly, — 'Pioneers' we love to be called. 
Your paper is fine and easily impressed, and the prices very reasonable." 

Rev. H. C. Farrar, President Class of 1883, writes: " The C. L. S. C. 
paper is beautiful and worthy a large sale. I know it must make every true 
Chautauquan more thoroughly in love with the Chautauqua idea, for writing 
his C. L. S. C. letters on this paper." 

J. B. Underwood, President Class of 1884, adds his testimony in these 
words: " It will be with great pleasure that each graduate * Invincible ' must 
welcome such superb taste as displayed in that prepared for their use, and the 
^v^iter congratulates you and the C. L. S. C. upon finally having some sta- 
tionery adapted to the home use of refined and cultivated firesides." 

Miss Carrie Hart, Treasurer Class of 1885, writes: " I am enjoying using 
it very much, and advertising it to my friends as fast as my correspondence 
will permit. It is the only C. L. S. C. stationery that has met my ideas of 
elegance and beauty for home use." 

One-quire box, 60 cents ; tviro-quire box, $1.00, by mail, postpaid. 

CHAUTAUQUA PRESS, 117 Franklin St, Boston. 



ft. 



^0. 



c 



-^ 



